Bantam Wait

The below article should appear in today's match programme against Bradford City. That's only if it was deemed worthy, of course.
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Ahhh, the new Football League season is upon us at last!


It might not seem very long since the season finished, especially if listening to my wife complaining about the paucity of football-free weekends. But the summer break still seems to last too long for me and I suspect many of you reading this.

So what do you do to get through the barren months? You could watch a spot of cricket, perhaps. You could even spend your Saturday afternoons shopping, god forbid.

Or, like me, you could try and distract yourself and leave the country on a summer holiday. I decided to go to East Africa and have a real adventure. Now ridden with bilharzia and fearful of having contracted malaria and dysentery too, I wish I’d just got those tickets to Lord’s instead, to be honest.

I must admit – I love August and watching the football in the sunshine in those early weeks of the season. Decked out in shorts and shades, the pre-match lager-shandy, and entering the ground full of confidence and expectation for the coming season.

Passerine: Scum.

And what is this? A long-overdue trip to Wiltshire added into the mix in these early weeks? Surely not! But yes indeed, there it is, burning a hole on all our wall-calendars with a very thick ring circled around it – the date of August 21st. It’s easy to get carried away of course by this upcoming trip, but let’s not lose track of the bigger picture of promotion out of League Two and that the games against the red-breasted passerines are just two games on the way to that goal. But oh, what two games, eh?

Today we welcome Bradford City to sunny Oxford - so last season’s two best-supported sides at this level should hopefully create a great atmosphere for our first home league game of the campaign.

Although obviously we played each other last season (can’t seem to remember playing them away though, for some reason), my most distinct memories of playing Bradford come from when we were in the same division from 1994-99.

The most vivid memory was my first trip to Valley Parade in Jan 1997. The Coach was delayed on the M6 for hours and we eventually arrived at the outskirts of Bradford only to hear that Bradford had gone 1-0 up. By the time the coach limply pulled up outside the turnstiles, there was just 30mins left and many of us were debating whether it was worth paying the entrance fee (which had only been reduced by £2!) to go in. We decided it was with the result of the match still in balance, but just as we entered the stand we heard the roar of 12,000 people above us, and rightly surmised that Oxford hadn’t on this occasion traveled in such great numbers, so it must mean Bradford were 2-0 up and the game was done and dusted.

McElliott: Classy Scot.

To make the memory even more painful, this also proved to be Matt Elliott's last game for Oxford and those dreams of play-offs to the Premiership faded forever as January wore on and we slipped down the league.

It’s a long time ago now – since then Bradford of course did spend time in the Premiership, and the less said about where we went the better, but today we both find ourselves in League Two hoping to bounce back up the leagues.

I’d be quite happy to re-visit Valley Parade, even to watch just the last 30mins, if in a few years’ time it was in the 2nd tier again (And with a 1997-era Matt Elliott playing for us too, if I’m allowed to be greedy).

Up The U's!