In Pursuit of the Perfect Boxing Day



Jingle Balls.


Ahh, Christmas time! Mistletoe & wine! Children singing Christian rhymes…


Doesn’t it make you feel all warm inside, thinking about all those lovely Christmas things? Actually though, I don’t know about the children singing Christian rhymes - certainly hearing local youths rapping about Jesus isn’t something I’ve really seen this Christmas or any.

Perhaps Cliff meant Christian carols? But then that wouldn’t fit with the song, would it? Unless it went “Christmas carols, mistletoe and barrels” perhaps. But then that just sounds odd.

Anyway, I digress.

Once I’ve listened to a bit of Cliff, what Christmas really means for me is a long, exciting build up to the big day itself.

And no, I don’t mean Christmas Day – I mean the day after that, for the big Boxing Day Oxford game. When we all forget about stuffing our faces, trying not to swear in front of granny and pretending to be happy with the nice reindeer jumper she’s knitted for us.

Indeed Boxing Day for most people reading this programme is likely to be the day when we put on our bobble hats and scarves (and maybe even Granny’s jumper, if it’s very cold) and head out for a few hours to the most anticipated game of the year.

It’s always one of the first fixtures you look at when the list comes out in the summer. It’s the only one you really, really want to be a home game. There’s nothing quite like a Boxing Day home game, after all.

A quick poke of the head into your regular drinking hole before the game, merry Christmases all round and everyone there with all the family in tow. Old faces you haven’t seen all season, all then making their merry way to Grenoble Road, perhaps with a festive bag of chips, and a few larks throwing snowballs at your friends.

You take your seat; you’ve warmed up with a nice cup of Bovril and get ready to cheer on the Yellows in front of a packed, full-capacity stadium. After the game and a resounding victory for The U’s perhaps back to that drinking hole again for a few more winter warmers – after all, there are at least another two or three days left before having to think about going back to work! So ends the perfect Boxing Day and Christmas are complete.

Sadly, this perfect Dickensian rosy picture of how I love the day-after-Christmas to pan out hasn’t quite worked out for the last few seasons. In fact you have to go back to 2007 since we last had a home Boxing Day game.

Last year, the game was postponed of course due to the weather. I’d already driven up by the time I found out so it was a disappointed trip to the pub with other aggrieved faces before a last minute decision to take in Didcot v. Oxford City instead on the way back home. It was a good game in truth (4-4 if you are interested. You’re not you say? Oh), but hardly made up for the Boxing Day experience I was expecting.

A Sorry Sight.

The year before that, 2008 brought a miserable trip to a windy field on the outskirts of Salisbury to what is surely the most disappointing place to hold a Boxing Day game of football.

Too far from the City centre to use it as a base, the nearest pub a 45mins walk away down a busy road with no pavement, so either up to the ankles in boggy mud or running the risk of getting a festive smack by a car.

To top that off, away fans not allowed into the supporters’ bar on the day. In fact, I think I remember being told there wasn’t a supporters’ bar by the very helpful stewards. So having turned up at the giddy hour of 12pm expecting some great pre-match Boxing Day atmosphere in a nearby country pub, I instead sat in my car for two hours, before another two hours queuing for a mediocre burger amongst other hungry, cold and disappointed travelling Oxford. Then we lost the match and Sam Deering had his leg broken by a dastardly rogue. I also got lost on the way home and my sat-nav directed me into the middle of a field somewhere in the wilds of Wiltshire. This wasn’t a good Boxing Day. The only good thing about it was that it marked the first game in the hot seat for a certain Mr Wilder.

So this year, it was a bit disappointing to again know there was to be no home Boxing Day game. Stevenage away isn’t quite the festive treat it might otherwise have been.

Orange Balls, Please.

In fact, as I write this, the weather is still touch and go and may still scupper the game anyway, and after already seeing the pre-Festive game on the 18th against Shrewsbury postponed due to Jack Frost being a mischievous little tyke – in my mind, Christmas is almost ruined.

Almost though, but not entirely because of the game against Macclesfield on the 28th (which WILL go ahead. Yes, it will. Bright sunshine all over Oxford today, mark my words).

December 28th should thus be treated as the REAL Boxing Day by all Oxford fans - I urge you all to treat it as such and have a right rollicking good knees up in front of a decent crowd.

Just write off the two days inbetween – if you are anything like me you’ll have pretty much done so anyway, sleeping off that turkey for the past 48 hours and sticking my fingers in my ears and pretending I don’t have to go to work on the 29th.

I’m sure my boss will understand…