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]

'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)

Subdued away at Cambridge

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

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)

Grays 0 - 4 Oxford

Gateshead 0 - 1 Oxford

After the first half at Ebbsfleet, thoughts drift away...

(...in the direction of Bedfordshire and Wales...)

After the return of the prodigal son

‘I gave them happiness, but I was not so self-serving as to let them forgive me. Not quite, not yet’

- Atonement

I’ve been standing at the mouth of the tunnel, feeling the waves of post-match fatigue wash over me, as I look at the penalty area in front of the East Stand. Thinking of goals from the last few weeks; thinking of goals from two years ago.

It’s been a month now, a month of trying to do what I’ve wanted to do for some time. Not to go back to that time two years ago, although I would be a liar if I were to deny I would do it if I could, but to find some kind of atonement for what came after.

The problem for this month has been this: how can a footballer achieve atonement for the past when forgiveness seems to only live in the present, so fleetingly? How many of these moments must there be before there can be atonement? The supporters may forget the past in the moment I score a goal, but can they ever really forgive? As the euphoria dies, is there not a look that tells me they can’t quite give themselves entirely to the moment - not yet - as I once didn’t give myself to them?

Perhaps it was always an impossible task, and perhaps that is precisely the point. The attempt was all. I can give them happiness, but I am not so self-serving as to let them forgive me. Not quite, not yet.

If I have the power, I would conjure them at a promotion party in April… a spring day at Minchery, milky sunlight slanting across the pitch, the supporters, jubilant in the stands, a sea of yellow as we confirm the championship? It’s not impossible.

(The images of Matt Green in this post are courtesy of Steve Daniels/Rage Online, reproduced here with kind permission.)

Oxford 4 - 0 Chester

(Sometimes it's hard to see much other than the players on the pitch)

Through a glass darkly at Histon

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

(It didn't die that day in April)

The return of Matt Green

('I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.'

- King James Bible, Luke 15: 18-19)

('The Lost Son' by Max Slevogt, courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons.)