Shrewd Business Practice

Tuesday, 16th August 2011
nPower League Two
OUFC 2 Shrewsbury Town 0

I wasn't intending on coming up for this one. I know all the jibes - 'part-timer', 'fair-weather fan', 'stupid f*cking c*nt'... I've been called them all before, often with justification. But hey, you non-exiles don't know what it's like traipsing up for an evening game when you work near France and live in the centre of London.

Last Wednesday I drove from work, a 5 hour round journey which cost me probably around £50-£60 in petrol. I wasn't doing that again. I can always drive from London after work, a cost of a mere £20-ish, but by the time I get back to London it's 6.30pm and it means I'd struggle to make kick-off to justify sitting in rush-hour traffic leaving London for 90minutes.

But a fellow London Yellow was desperate to go and convinced me to drive us both last night from London at 6.30, even if it meant missing the first 20mins. Well I'm glad he convinced me, as that was a corker last night.

We actually made good time and were parked up at The Blackbird by 7.30, and although that meant no time for a drink or even a Spicy Branos Burger, it meant we were in the ground for kick-off and I was delighted I'd made the effort on such a gorgeous August night for football.

There were an awful lot of police about for some reason. Maybe they were looking for Shrewsbury's Steroid Man whom I mentioned last season. Certainly they were out in force with cameras and what have you, which seemed overkill for a mid-week fixture with no real needle, so I can't think what else they were up to.

Walking down to the ground from the Leys, hearing Perkele's Yellow & Blue song floating across the field and noticing the most spectacular Oxfordshire sunset sky, I had a feeling we were in for a treat tonight - and so we were.

Oxfordshire Sunset: Very nice.

Make no mistake, Shrewsbury are a good side and will be up there at the end of the season. The difference between them and Bradford was striking, in my eyes. It's an old cliché I know but we always seem to do well when a good side comes down to the Kassam and lets us play. And last night, we played.

Special mention I think for the young and oddly named Asa Hall. Odd to me at least, as I've never come across the name before. Perhaps you went to school with dozens of Asas, or had a great-uncle Asa. Well I didn't. I know it's a strange thing to be suddenly bringing up well over a year after we signed him, but it's something that's been bugging me for ages. I've also been pronouncing it in my head as "Assa" for a while too, something I may continue, furtively. Apparently it's an old Hebrew word meaning 'Healer' or 'Physician,' if you are interested. Oh, you're not. OK.

Asa: The Great Healer.

Anyway, back to the game and what more can I say except WOW WHAT A FUCKING GOAL from Heslop. Does it rival Beauchamp's against Blackpool? Well, no. But all the same, what a cracker. And there's an excuse to look at that Beauchamp goal again though.

So, we saw the game out. We passed it around lovely-like, we created and we finished some chances and we kept them out at the other end. To top all this off, Swindon lose at Daggers and we are above them in the League standings for the first time in 11 ruddy years - just in time to play them on their patch.

It's all very exciting, isn't it?

I don't know about you, but I might pop along to that game on Sunday after all. Are there any tickets left?

The Taming of the (Oh no, sorry I can't do it).

The below article should appear in tonight's programme against Shrewsbury. Buy it though - as Martin will put some nice alternate pictures next to it stuff.
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These games are coming thick and fast at the moment, aren’t they? Three in a week – wow. It’s a good job I haven’t run out of things to say yet, isn’t it?


So… what about those riots in London then eh? Yeah, they were pretty fierce and what have you. And the economic situation is still a little shaky, isn’t it? Oh, and did you hear about that man that…ummm, yeah.

Well, tonight we welcome The Shrews of Shrewsbury to Oxford, for another tough early-season test.

Trips to Shrewsbury’s old Gay Meadow were always a treat for me, I loved that old ground. I guess it reminded slightly of our own old Manor Ground – and certainly on my last trip there in 2005 it felt nostalgic, standing on a rickety old terrace behind the goal again.


Gay Meadow: Just Very Happy.

At the time of course, I had little inclination that I’d be about to spend four long years standing on rickety old terraces in non-league, during which time my dewy-eyed nostalgia for grounds of ‘character’ was lessened somewhat by trips to the likes of Droylsden, Southport and Tonbridge Angels.


But for all the obvious advantages of moving to our respective new grounds, fans of both Oxford and Shrewsbury will still miss their old homes in equal measure, I’m sure. Plus Gay Meadow had an old man in a coracle who retrieved the balls from the river, apparently. That’s brilliant.

Trips to Shrewsbury always seemed to involve sitting in a beer garden of the nice pub near the ground beforehand. And if time allowed, an exploration of the town by walking over the ‘English Bridge’ (I always assumed into Wales, but apparently not) and discover and explore some lovely old buildings. Lovely old buildings that mainly served beer, but some lovely old buildings nonetheless.

Matt 'Guitar' Murphy.
I think google image search
has let me down this time.

I went to Gay Meadow on three occasions and the games were all very different affairs indeed. First up was an FA Cup tie in November 1999. I remember this being an exciting game, with goals from Matt Murphy and Rob Folland salvaging a 2-2 draw for Oxford and a replay back at the Manor. The replay was also a cracker which went into Extra-Time – but a brace from the unfairly maligned Murphy again saw us through the tie.

McNiven: Not a goalkeeper.

The second trip was a very strange affair in March 2003. After a collision during the Shrewsbury equaliser on the stroke of half-time, Oxford keeper Andy Woodman had to be taken off with facial injuries, and with no substitute goalkeeper on the bench, the 5’8” Scott McNiven went in goal for the last 45 minutes. I remember wondering why the hell the shortest man on the pitch had been given the gloves, but he had and that was that.

So, imagining the rest of the game was only going to go one way with an under-tall novice in goal, straight after the re-start Jefferson Louis defied my expectations and bags a goal to give Oxford a 2-1 lead.

Gay Meadow: I never saw it this packed.

It was a mad end to the game, with Oxford having numerous chances to finish it off and McNiven thankfully not having much cause to test out his goal-keeping skills with Oxford attacking the Shrewsbury half. There was still even time for a red card apiece in this bad-tempered affair, but Oxford managed to hold on for the victory, somehow. Great game.

The third and last trip to Gay Meadow was in April 2005, and the home side won 3-0. Don’t remember much about that game. Think it was probably a load of old rubbish.
Up The U’s!

You Shrews, You Lose.

Saturday, 7th May 2011.
nPower League Two
Shrewsbury Town 3 OUFC 0

 
I always like the last game of the season, even when there is nothing to play for. As long as you don't end the day relegated there is always something of a party atmosphere about a last-day away trip.

For the travelling 800+ Oxford fans, this was really a non-event - Oxford were playing for pride only. But for Shrewsbury of course, a win for them and anything less for Wycombe at home to Southend, and Shrewsbury would leap-frog our near-neighbours into the last promotion spot. So we had a chance to wreck their party.

I had a full car for a change for the trip to Salop* this weekend. Rising fuel costs dictate that trips like this can't be done alone anymore, however much I'd like to be able to wallow in solitude to a Leonard Cohen soundtrack for the journey. So I rounded up a couple of chaps from London, and a further wastrel from Oxford and off we set to the Welsh borderlands.

It's a funny old town, Shrewsbury. So obviously a bit of a cut-off backwater these days, it has a civic grandeur in places that reminds it was once on the doorstep of the industrial revolution and a very wealthy trading centre some 200 years ago.

It's one of those places that appears a lovely quaint market town with grand civic buildings, but when you scratch under the surface it's quite a rough-and-ready town. A place where the seemingly innocent choice of pub you go into can mean the difference between sharing pre-match drinks with an eccentric bunch of hippies and bikers guilty only of too-much substance abuse over the years; or walking into an angry wall of imitation stone-island jumpers and coke'd-up chavs in tracksuits willing to knock your nose into the back of your head.

Thankfully, after parking up in the town centre we ended up walking into the former rather than the latter - and perhaps the most bizarre pub I think I've ever been to. It was called Yorkshire House and the outside facade in a lovely quiet square next to a beautiful red-stone church did little to prepare us for the delights of the interior that awaited.

This pub you see, had wizards and goblins in it. No, seriously - wizards and goblins. Next to the bar. Wizards and goblins.

I see you don't believe me? Well - here is the proof, as modelled by my lovely assistant Susan.


Wizards...




...and Goblins. In a pub.

Yorkshire House was a metallers pub, with leather-clad patrons and wall-murals of classic Slayer and Iron Maiden albums, and also statues of wizards and goblins by the bar. Well why not I say?

We had a good hour or two chatting to some of the quite crazy locals in there to the soundtrack of Norwegian Black Metal. One friend of mine got chatting to a local who told him he refused to watch football any more because his dad was killed at Shrewsbury's old Gay Meadow ground by a flying tomato which hit him right on the temple. I kid you not, and this chap was either a genius at delivering deadpan comedy or was totally serious.

After our cultural exchange with these crazed Salopians, we got a taxi out to Shrewsbury's new ground. A ground which is a good 3 miles well out of town, surrounded on all sides by fields (fields that had clearly just been coated in shit, judging by the stench), and yet provided not a single parking space for visiting fans. A ridiculous state of affairs and having to traipse back to the town centre was not something I was looking forward to having seen how up for a scrap some of their fans seemed to be inside the ground.

I've not got an awful lot to say about the game itself. More than anything because it was far more entertaining watching the Salopians fighting amongst themselves and with the stewards. There was also the quite hilarious sight of Shrews fans TWICE celebrating what they perceived to be Southend goals, when in fact they were Wycombe goals. Someone must have been having a laugh in there feeding them dud information. Perhaps that is what caused them to kick the living shit out of each other.



"Breathe On 'Em, Salop!"

"Well, either that or kick the shit out of the bloke sat next to you."

90mins came and went, and as an apt reflection for the way the season as a whole petered out too early, our defenders looked like they'd already boarded the plane for their summer holidays by the time Shrewsbury walked through for their third goal. And so, that was that - the season was over.

Our day's adventures still involved trying to get back to our car amidst a mildly-sinister atmosphere though. Whilst walking back amidst the Shrews fans, keeping our heads down just in case any of them were as mentally-ill as they looked they were in the ground, I realised that I wasn't used to this feeling any more. This edgy uneasiness leaving a football game - the feeling that you need to be on guard as it might kick-off at any point.

This used to be par for the course of going to football for me, 10 years ago. The fact is these days I rarely take the train and/or have to walk back to the town centre after a game like I used to- It's normally straight back to the car and off. Plus, for the past 4 seasons we've been travelling to villages or nothing-towns where the threat of trouble just doesn't raise it's head. Other than Luton, the most threatening thing in recent years has been the danger of falling into the duck-pond at Histon and getting the unwanted attentions of a randy mallard.

Nothing did happen on the way back to the car of course, but there was a nervy moment at the bus-stop when I noticed a Schwarzenegger-wannabe who'd been giving it the big-un all through the first half was approaching us, clearly off his tits and also bang up for slapping somebody, if he could.



Shrews Steroid-Man. He looked just like this (or thought he did, at least).

Thankfully, he walked straight past us, probably off home to spit on his mum and beat up his dog. Of course, had he tried it on I'd have used my kung-fu skills on him and he'd have been mincemeat. But I don't like getting the chops flying unless I really have to.

It was a long old day, and the trip home pretty uneventful - but it had all been too much for one of the passengers. Bless.

So, 12th place in the end isn't a bad finish for our first season back in the league - but you can't help feeling that we should have been in the play-off mix, and anything less that that next season will be viewed a lot more critically by most fans than it was this season.

Roll on August!

  

*Yes, that's right, Salop.

It may now officially be Shropshire but I remember when my Phillip's School Atlas clearly marked this borderlands county as Salop. And the locals seem to still like being called Salopians from Salop. Weirdos. Incidentally, Salop is also French slang for a slapper. Haha, you Shrewsbury Salops!