Dr Livingstone, I Presume?

Saturday, 28th August 2010.
nPower League Two
OUFC 0 Accrington Stanley 0

Ian Rush said, if I didn't win the Milk Cup, I'd only be good enough to play Accrington Stanley. Or something like that, anyway.

So, you wait five decades to play a side, passing them in and out of the league both ways in the process in a bizarre, coincidental fashion. Then when you do meet, you nearly die of boredom.

So was the remarkable saga of Oxford & Accrington, the ghosts of 1962 for them and 2006 for Oxford, put to rest on Saturday by this first ever meeting between the two sides.

Far from the world collapsing in on itself, we instead were treated to a snooze draw of biblical-proportions of shiteness. Oxford, in fairness will probably consider themselves the luckier of the two teams to have come away with a point - Accrington looked a decent side who passed the ball around very well at times, something we couldn't match over the 90 mins.

The scary thing about Accrington looking half-decent was that this is substantially the same team that finished a mediocre 15th last year in League Two.

Having first been impressed by Bury's footballing side and then assured ourselves a draw at Wycombe was a good one against title contenders, there comes a time when we might have to admit that this League may be a bigger step up than we might like to have thought it was...

In the Conference, you can comfortably look to 10-15 games a season that Oxford would expect to win without breaking too much of a sweat. Teams that are basically shit - cloggers with no ability, no tactics and no brains. I don't think you can say the same in League Two. The sides all seem to be passing it around nicely, and at a pace that we are not used to.

This should not be as much of a worry as it seems though, considering we have for the most matched all we've played. For me, Saturday was the exception as I thought Accrington looked better than us. OK, they weren't exactly on fire and our back line did their job (Wright especially, who was a rock).

Yet I was astounded to hear a couple of callers on Radio Oxford after the game say Accrington came to 'park the bus' and 'stop us from playing'. They were watching a different game to me then, as I thought Accrington over-ran us in midfield, were first to every 2nd ball and gave Oxford no time on the ball to settle. They also swept the ball across the park quite beautifully at times, making Oxford look quite ordinary.

We are allowed a shit performance now and then, and hey - we didn't lose.

The longer we go without that first league win though the more nervy our performances may become, so we have to get back to playing decent stuff on the grass and learn to cope with the change of gear.

Most important of all, the players need to put in a shift and adjust to the fact that week-in, week-out, we'll be playing FOOTBALLING teams this season - not a bunch of part-time, hoof-ball bandits. And frankly, I thank the lord for that.