Mansfield away - what a bloody mess!!

The palaver that is Oxford United's season took another turn for the worst on saturday as we deservedly lost at field mill. The goal that beat us was dodgy to say the least - after seeing it several times it doesn't look like the ball crossed the line but the Stags had a pefectly good goal ruled out earlier in the game and were by far the better side for much of the afternoon and deserved the win.
701 Oxford fans made the trip made the trip to Mansfield and for 84 minutes were a credit to the club then suddenly it all went wrong. After Mansfields dis-allowed goal about ten minutes earlier, the atmosphere in the ground changed to something a little more tense and aggressive than it had been although nothing that would have given anyone cause for concern. with just under ten minutes to go in the game a glass bottle came over the side of the stand into the away end hitting a women and child, whilst they were not injured they were of course shaken up and fans around them believing it was thrown by are own fans (who were
more drunk and rowdy than I've seen all year) began agrily remonstrating. Stewards sensing a problem moved into the stand realising what had really happened and calmed everyone down and offering to take those hit by the bottle to the other end of the stand.
As this confusion was going on Mansfield scored which only added to the tension and a group of fans began to follow stewards along the path in front of the stand towards the home end. Without warning two prats suddenly bolted across the pitch towards the Mansfield fans almost making it but taken down by stewards just in time. As the stewards were dealing with the two idiots, around 50 'fans' charged the Mansfield stand getting almost close enough to exchange handfulls of coins, were it not for the quick heavy handed approach of the Mansfield stewards there would have been serious fighting and we could have been docked several points. It took about five minutes to force the fans back from the home concourse and although the game was able to re-start order was not really restored until 15 minutes after the final wistle.

For the rest of the pictures of the day click on this link:

http://public.fotki.com/girondinant/manfieldvoxford/