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

Our dark material

'This strange hulking presence gnawing its meat was like nothing she had ever imagined, and she felt a profound admiration and pity for the lonely creature.'

- Northern Lights

‘Beast. May I speak to you?

My heart was thumping hard, because something in the Beast’s present made me feel close to coldness, danger, brutal power, but a power controlled by intelligence; and not a human intelligence, nothing like a human. The tattoos that snaked down his arms seemed to wreath his limbs with some organic design. This strange hulking presence pounding the touchline of the pitch was like nothing I had ever imagined, and I felt a profound admiration and pity for the lonely creature.

He ceased his pounding and crouched. Steam rose from his close-cropped head, and his stubble-lined jaw tightened. Then he stood up massively, six feet and more high, as if to show how mighty he was, to remind me of how useless the advertising hoardings would be as a barrier, and he spoke to me from that height.

‘Well? Who are you?’

His voice was so deep it seemed to shake the earth.

‘I’m a supporter of Oxford United.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I want to see you employed.’

‘I am employed.’

It was very hard to detect any expressive tones in his voice, whether of irony or anger, because it was so deep and flat.

‘Employed at what?’

‘I train with the team.’

‘What kind of work is that for a player such as you?’

‘Paid work.’

The beast knelt and began to stretch his mighty legs, heedless of me, it seemed; but then he spoke again.

‘What work are you suggesting?’

‘Fighting, in all probability,’ I said. ‘Soon we have to play Wimbledon at home, and Stevenage away. When that happens, we’ll have to fight to win.’

‘And what will you pay?’

‘I don’t know what to offer you Beast. If honour and glory are desirable to you, I can offer that.’

He was silent.

‘Forgive me for asking, Beast, but you could live a free proud life on the pitch. What ties you to the touchline and the bench?’

I felt my skin shiver all over. The question, which was almost an insult, may have enraged the great creature beyond reason, and I wondered how I’d had the courage to ask it. The Beast stopped his stretch, and came close to the terrace where I stood to peer at my face.

‘I know Stevenage and I know Wimbledon. Now I don’t like these teams, so I shall answer you politely. I stay here and pace this touchline and sit on that bench because they took away my yellow shirt. Without the yellow shirt I can train, but I can’t go to war in matches such as you speak of. I came to Oxford to escape from this league with you, and battles such as these are the air I breathe and the food I eat. They took my shirt from me, and if I knew how to get it back, I should tear that bench from its fixings and hurl it into the stands. If you want my service, I must have this shirt. With that, and I shall serve you in your campaign, either until I am dead or until you have victory.’

With that, I watched the mighty beast turn and resume his ceaseless patrol of the touchline, his eyes focused on something in the distance that before I had not been able to discern. But now I knew that it was a yellow shirt with the Ox's head above the ford on its chest.

[A post in honour of Mark Creighton's service to Oxford this season. Rhys Day and Jake Wright have formed a formidable centre back pairing, and one couldn't argue with that. But in the same way that we wouldn't contest the fox hunting ban, nevertheless the sight of Mark Creighton playing for his place in an FA trophy game seems as sad a sight as a pack of hunting dogs chasing a bag of sand.

Image credits: Image of polar bear adapted from a photograph by douglasperkins courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons; images of Mark Creighton courtesy of Steve Daniels/Rage Online, and reproduced here with kind permission]

Ten men in touching distance at home to Barrow

Remnants of another time at home to Yeovil in the Cup

(On the outside and looking in, but working on it)

Reading photographs: The geometry of a photo

The emotion of this photo is immediate: Green runs arms outstretched, Creighton bellows defiance, and Oxford's supporters rise as one to acclaim the unlikely. But the photographer's decision to keep the players and the pitch to the bottom third of his photo leaves a geometry to this photo: a plane provides the meeting point for three vectors.

Scattered over the pitch, York defenders have collapsed, defeated, sunk into the background. Mark Creighton has just scored the winning goal late in the game, and leads a line of Oxford players. Danny Bulman and Matt Green follow their own lines to this point. There seems an implicit knowledge of where they are heading, they meet at a point on the plane in front of them. That plane rises in front of them, dwarfing them: the supporters rising from their seats, arms aloft, mouths open mirroring the roar of Creighton.

A plane can be unlimited in its extension: this picture doesn't show whether or where it stops. Vectors, however, meet at a point. The players are individual representatives on the pitch of this bank of supporters, a plane which might continue indefinitely: the discrete part and the whole. In this picture we see the size of the players dwarfed by the supporters, but emotionally there is a mirroring; and geometrically, a union.

[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]

The FA Cup prompts comparisons with this time last year

(A sense of calm prevails)

History is quietly cast to one side as Oxford win at the Racecourse

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.)

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

(It didn't die that day in April)