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]

Sunshine brings Us back to where we were at home to Mansfield

1-0 away at Altrincham

Victory over Salisbury at home

'Just a game': Gateshead at home

(The thoughts in James Constable and Paul Farman's heads as far apart as could be: their reaction, identical)

Desire brings results at home to Rushden

(Performances are one thing, but it's all about a mindset now)

Victory at home to Histon beneath constantly shifting skies

Grays 0 - 4 Oxford

Back on the march at Crawley

Oxford 1 - 0 Altrincham

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.)

Planting a marker in the ground at home to Stevenage

Opening day at home to York: L'esprit de la saison dernière

(It didn't die that day in April)

A force of nature at Burton

(How else to explain what has happened to this football club? Now all we can do is watch and wait, witness to things beyond our control and comprehension.)

Time slows at home to Wrexham

(In the final moment the persecuted souls of Oxford supporters cry out, James Constable rises: there is silence, and then thunder.)

[El Greco's Opening of the Fifth Seal courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Waiting for a miracle at Stevenage

(From our men we saw resolution in the face of superior numbers from Stevenage, the whimsy of officials, and hail from the heavens: but we'd come for miracles)

Away at Kettering: Oxford still travelling

(Destination still unclear)

Realising the fragility of our position at home against Lewes

(...a sense of something slipping, or something slippery, a just-melting icicle held in mittens...)

[Icicle image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

James Constable leads Oxford from the front to victory against Altrincham

(Football is a team game, but occasionally this can be overshadowed as one man seems to stand alone, head down, driven.)

Light through the gloom as Oxford beat York at home