Back on the Coupon!

A Fan’s View: By FantasticMrOx

In the immortal words of Jerome Sale on the final whistle at Wembley – Oxford United are ‘Back on the Coupon.’

It might at first seem a fairly throwaway comment but in truth, being back on the coupon is for me all tied up with what getting promoted in May was all really about.

Status.

To be able to declare, as I have proudly since young Mr Potter passed the ball so gracefully into the net that day, that we are Football League is to my mind the greatest joy I’ve taken from my 16 years of supporting OUFC.

No more national obscurity.
No more “Oh, yeah, I remember Oxford, what happened to you?”
No more ‘Qualifying rounds’.
No more purchasing speciality papers in order to read a match report.

No, none of that and more. For we are a member of the 92 once again (well, 72 technically but you know what I mean), and tonight we play again in the League Cup - a privilege we had been excluded from for four years. As former winners of this prestigious cup, it was an exile our fans found even harder to bear than most. Well no longer do we have to bear it, as we are Football League.

I enjoyed a lot about being in the Conference though. That might sound odd, but I think all of us will in some way miss the randomness of trips to the likes of Grays, Histon or Ebbsfleet, and the friendliness found at clubs like Forest Green Rovers.

It was also nice to be the big fish in the little pond. Everywhere we went we would swamp grounds & impress with our travelling support, with many clubs looking forward to their fixture against the ‘giants’ of non-league.

It’s all the nicer now we’ve been promoted to have handed that ‘big fish’ crown over to Luton last season though, obviously. I’m sure they’ll enjoy it too, up to a point (which they may have already passed!).

Four years in Non-League was four years too many for most fans, I’m sure. I can understand that.

The very fact that this level of football is described with reference to a negative; NON-League - It seems more about what it wasn’t. About what we had lost. Rather than what it was and what we still had to re-gain.

Yet I believe that those four years will serve us well in the long run – both as a club and as a group of fans.

Never will we have an arrogance about us that we are ‘too big’ to go down again. Never will the commercial & symbolic implications of losing League status be forgotten.

If you were with me on the terraces of Droylsden & Barrow, or on the muddy sidelines at Tonbridge & AFC Sudbury, you will always be grateful for League status regained and truly understand what that means; Something to be cherished in a way fans of clubs who have not dropped out of the league will never, ever understand unless they go through the same.

AFC Sudbury: on a less muddy day than our visit in Dec 2008.

We are back where we belong, something achieved only after learning to respect the non-league world as a club and as fans. The Football Conference is surely the hardest league in the country to get promoted out of - we can all vouch for that.

But we did get promoted out of it.

We are now on the ladder again. It may well be the bottom rung – but you have to start climbing it somewhere. And those windows on the top floor look like they could do with a damn good scrub to me…