Wycombe In Peace

nPower League Two
Saturday, 21st August 2010
Wycombe Wanderers 0 OUFC 0
Att 6,983

What an odd little place High Wycombe is. Going on name and location alone, you expect it to be a sort of St Albans kind of place. A bit of a well-to-do, pretty looking commuter belt town. The sort of place Phil Collins or Paul Daniels would live. Where you would most likely spend the odd afternoon enjoying a glass of Sauvignon by a riverside gastro-pub, eating over-priced sausages and devilled kidneys.

Instead, what High Wycombe actually is would best be described as St Albans having being raped viciously by Stevenage. The vestiges of the old market town in the centre is merely the presence of an old town hall in the immediate vicinity of a giant, grey steel structured Sainsbury's car park and numerous confusing and many exited roundabouts encroaching needlessly on what little is left of a pedestrianised centre.

Even the railway station seems ashamed to be associated with the town, and appears to be edging out of the town by running up a hill away from the centre. Having spent an afternoon in the town, I can hardly blame it.

I arrived with a couple of London-based chums early for this one, as it was meant to be an informal stag do of sorts. Probably a large mistake, in hindsight. After a brief pint in town in a lovely beer garden doubling up as a car park, with scenic views of the aforementioned Sainsbury's car park, we decided to admit defeat in pretending we were above our base instincts and go and look at some bare-naked ladies in The White Horse.

Thankfully for the fate of our misguided souls, it was rammed full of naturist-lovers so we instead ended up having a few quieter ones in the pub right next door. I can't remember what it was called, but an apt name might have been 'The Overflow Arms' perhaps.

I've always thought it was an odd little ground, Adams Park. Positioned at the dead-end of a long residential road that turns into a mini-industrial estate, the ground itself looks like a leisure centre from the outside and is framed on three sides by tree-lined hillsides.

Yet inside, it's more like a morgue. Wycombe must have some of the quietest fans in the Football League and considering this game, for them at least is meant to have a 'derby' feel to it, some of the most apathetic fans too.

I know us Oxford fans often decry the fact that we are rivals, but this is still a very local game - it is a derby. It can be a derby without necessarily being a rivalry. As such, and with the promise of 2,300 away supporters turning up, it's a pretty poor effort on Wycombe's part to not even get close to filling their ground.

On the pitch, very much a game of two-halves - They overran us in the middle of the park in the 1st half and I was wondering if we'd be able to hang on for another 45mins without being ripped apart. 2nd half though, we were all over them and can probably be thinking ourselves the more unlucky not to have won the game with the chances we had. Finishing again, coming back to haunt us.

Wycombe will surely be up there at the end of the season though, and a point at their place in the context is a good point. that first League win must come soon though for psychological reasons if nothing else.

Looks all set then for Accrington next week - given the historical baggage between the two teams, it would be quite apt.