Time's arrow

'And I within, who came at the wrong time - either too soon, or after it was all too late.'

- Time's Arrow

'...fuck you and fuck this stupid club…’

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Dear Mr. Smith,

I’m writing to you to tell you about my son, Luke.

He is currently playing for Stalybridge Celtic in the Conference North, but I truly believe that he has the ability to play at a higher level, having played for Lincoln in the football league and York in the Conference. Luke was a trainee at Sheffield Wednesday, and I’m sure you can talk to some people there who will tell you about him, but if you were to offer him a trial, you’d see a strong central defender who will give his all for Oxford, but also knows how to play a ball.

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‘…I am so proud. It's great to get the award from the lads, but to receive the supporters’ award as well is fantastic and I'd like to thank them for that. I wasn't in the team at the start of the season but was determined to do everything I could when I got my chance, and that seems to have paid off. I'll be taking the trophies home in the summer to show my family, and they will take pride of place…’

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Luke is desperate to play for Oxford under you, and should he get a chance to show what he can do, you will be getting a fully-committed professional footballer. All Luke wants to do is be the best footballer he can be, and playing for a manager of your experience would enable him to do this.

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‘…Fozzie has been disappointing in his attitude, which has affected why he's not involved. Lifestyle is very important for a footballer and he maybe needs to look at changing his…’

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Yours sincerely,

Mr. Foster

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‘…He's played for Lincoln and York and I got a letter from his dad - it's probably because he's a Sheffield lad that I took a bit of interest in him. And I spoke to Marvin Robinson, who played with him at Lincoln. He said that he crunches people - so I thought that might do us well in this league!..’

[Image credits: sand adapted from a photograph by Manfred Morgner courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons; Images of Luke Foster courtesy of Steve Daniels/Rage Online, and reproduced here with kind permission]

Reading photographs: Release

Hope has been a recurrent theme on these pages. But hope so easily melds into expectation. It's hard to think back to August, when we realised that the hope inspired by a strong finish and the building of a convincing squad had somehow coagulated into expectation.

We realised this over the course of about an hour after Richard Brodie had scored at Minchery on a sunny day in August, and the mood on the terrace gradually turned from disappointment, to frustration, to despair. We started to realise: we had thought this was our season.

It took three minutes for the world to change.

Several times this season we've experienced that moment when you exhale so hard that it's a struggle to breathe. We did it that afternoon, and this image shows Matt Green mirroring this. Pain and pleasure in one image, as something is released from within. It's a startling image, but in fact this isn't an image of Matt Green after scoring the first of two goals - the goal scorer is behind him. Mark Creighton, 'The Beast', is locked in fierce embrace with his centre half colleague at the time. It's the sort of embrace you recognise that again shows that dual pleasure and pain: the pleasure is heightened because you realise what you only just avoided.

An unlikely goal scorer, and an unlikely reaction.

And Luke Foster: we're coming for you. What we'd written before and never published seems somehow apt at the point we find ourselves now.

There'll be some other retrospective pieces on this season over the coming weeks. Thanks for reading.

[Image credit: Steve Daniels/Rage Online, and reproduced here with kind permission]

In our beginning was our end

8th August 2009: 16th May 2010.

[The above photo is © Lewis Outing LRPS CPAGB, and reproduced here with his kind permission. See more of his photography here: http://www.mainlyfax.fotopic.net]

Journey to our heart of darkness

'There were moments when one’s past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream...'

- Heart of Darkness

Going to the ground that day was like travelling back to seasons past, when supporters crowded the bars and clustered round the stadium. Yet, like a visit to the past, a silence seemed to lie over the area. An as-yet-empty terrace, a great silence, and impenetrable crowd of people. The air turned cold, time slowed. When the clouds occasionally parted, there was no joy in the brilliance of the sudden sunshine. The meandering groups of supporters who had stayed with us for the whole journey wandered into the gloom of over-shadowed distances, eyes cast down, avoiding the excited glances of others who had just joined us now.

You lost your way that day as you would in a desert, and batted all day long against shoulders, trying to find your way through, till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had known once – somewhere – far away – in another existence perhaps.

There were moments when one’s past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of faces, and grey, and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect. I got used to it after a while; I did not see it any more; I had no time. The game started and I had to keep guessing at our course; I had to discern the dangers that lay ahead, the signs of mistakes; I watched for a moment of inspiration to visit the players in yellow in front of me; I was learning to clap my teeth smartly before my heart flew out when a speculative shot would stray towards our goal, only to be gathered safely in. When you have to attend to things of that sort, to the mere incidents of the surface, the reality – the reality, I tell you – fades. The purpose for our journey, the inner truth, is hidden – luckily, luckily. But I felt it all the same; I felt often its mysterious stillness watching us after we’d paid the entrance fee, not to forget the heartache which makes up the rest of the price.

But what, indeed, does the price matter, if the trick is well done?

[Image credits: Image from Apocolypse Now courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons; match image courtesy of Steve Daniels/Rage Online, and reproduced here with kind permission]

Play off semi final, first leg: A call to the colours at Rushden

What we lost in the storm

(A moment: but there are more to come, and they're not to be let slip so easily when we've come this far)

Oxford through the looking glass at home to Luton

(Luton show us how we looked three seasons ago)

[Sir John Tenniel's illustration from Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

A bout of nerves at Kingsmeadow

(Histories collided, and nerves can betray a fear of failure, or indicate the knowledge that something of importance is at stake.)