I Hate Football

Last weekend was one of those rare occasions where absolutely nothing went right. With the mighty U's(...) not playing on Saturday I did something I haven't done since May 2005 and hauled my football ass over to Court Place Farm to watch our Southern League neighbours Oxford City take on newly promoted Andover. It was awful. Despite Andover playing about an hour with 10 men they tore City apart and eventually ran out 4-0 winners. The standard of football was woeful and although the crowd of just over 200 was City's third best of the season the sheer silence with which they watch a game meant there might as well have been none. I have been well and truly reminded why I stopped going to watch them. Just to round off a completely pointless day Dagenham whooped Exeter 4-1 sending them 9 points clear at the top of the conference making Monday's game against Rushden something of a cup final for Oxford. In case I was hoping for solace from farther afield Banbury lost 3-1 at Tiverton and Bordeaux crashed to an extremely disappointing home defeat against Lille. That's 4 results I was looking out for and each one went completely wrong. Surely the U's wouldn't let me down Monday though... Yeah right!!
What happened on Monday night will live long in my memory as one of the most disappointing nights I've ever experienced as an Oxford United fan. It's not just about the result because lets be fair Rushden deserved it; they worked hard for each other, moved the ball well and created numerous chances. It was the sheer ineptitude of Oxford performance that really hurt, It's like all of a sudden no one wants to play anymore. The way they struggled around the pitch creating nothing at all live in front of the sky TV cameras was frankly embarrassing. All though I hate to say it I felt ashamed of that team and that performance last night and having stood through the shit that's been served up for the last seven years or so I think we had every right to express our disgust at the end. I am sick of watching various useless teams run rings around us whilst we stand there in silence listening a handful of away fans cheer and celebrate in the North stand. Absolutely SICK of it.

I will be there no matter what but then I have the disposable income to be. Many do not and will be soon be wondering why they are spending their hard earned cash to watch crap football played by people who don't give a toss. If something is not done soon the club will see attendance’s fall very quickly and without that revenue we can forget being a league team again for a very long time.
Not Happy

Bordelais Allez!!!

It's been a long time since I wrote anything about Bordeaux but despite not having as strong a league campaign as last year, this season is well worth following. After picking up a string of wins before the winter break (defeat at home to Rennes aside) Les Girondins have had a mostly successful January winning Coupe de France ties against Bastia and Chamois Niort and securing their place in the coupe de la Ligue Final. The showdown with Lyon on March 31st will be Bordeaux's first appearance in any cup final since 2002 when they won the CDL beating Lorient at the Stade de France.Whilst on the subject of Lorient, they are so far the only team to visit Parc Lescure for a league game in 2007 so far and somehow managed to come away with a 1-1 draw. On Wednesday however Les Girondins not only got back on track put pulled off the result of the season with a win away at CDL opponents Lyon. This was Lyon's first defeat at Gerland all season, but despite the shock still enjoy a 14 point lead over second placed Marseille. Whether or not this result will have any bearing on the CDL is debatable but at least Bordeaux have proved to themselves that they are capable on their day of taking on the Lyon winning machine and coming out on top.This Saturday high flying Lille visit Parc Lescure in what should be a tight game which if Les Marines et Blancs can win will leapfrog them ahead of Lille and could potentially put them on the same points as Marseille and Lens in second and 3rd. Bordeaux lost 3-0 at the Metropole earlier in the season and will be hoping to avenge that defeat with a similar scoreline. New Argentinean signing form Spartak Moscow Fernando Cavenaghi does not go into this weeks team but will be hoping to make his debut a week later away to Nice in what is always a fiery encounter.

Well something's not Woking!!

Another game, another poor result. Worringly we are slowly beginning to turn what had been a run of disappointing draws into something much more serious and by losing at Woking on Tuesday now find ourselves a daunting six points behind Daggenham. Having sort of got back on track at Grays it was hoped we could carry this over and put in a good performance in the Surrey town that inspired Weller's 'Town called Malice' but alas we didn't. Instead we went 1-0 in the 13th minute, allowed Woking's time wasting tactics to disrupt the games flow and wasted the handful of chances that came our way.
Not much else to say, if we don't beat Rushden on Monday then we can forget the title.

Grays

Believe it or not the conference has awoken a long lost interest in Geography from somewhere deep within. Last year we went to a handful of games up north in towns that are instantly dismissed as shitholes by people who haven't actually been there. I enjoyed every one of the northern towns last season and found them to be pleasant well kept places that do not deserve their bad press.
This year our away games seem to be mostly centred around the south east which is great from a travel cost point of view but so far every one of these towns has been a deprived concrete mess falling well below the standards of the much maligned North. I started to wonder after Saturday’s game at Grays why the wealthy South East was in fact a collection of run down depressed towns.
There seems to be a general prejudice in England towards the North. It is seen by many of us southerners (particularly in the South East) as some sort of decaying wasteland where everyone wears a flat cap, eats gristle and speaks like Fred Dinbah. Crazy accent aside this is a grossly unfair stereotype and hides an underlying insecurity in the south about the state of our own back yard. The South East of England is the most prosperous corner of the Country thanks almost entirely to two millennia of international trade in London. There are other 'flagship' towns thrust into public limelight for their beauty and historical significance like Oxford and Canterbury, or as shining examples of modern, clean, safe economic success such as Reading.
Whilst London and other successful towns continue to grow in size and create more and more jobs, so do the economic migration rates leaving surrounding smaller settlements almost devoid of both skilled workers and quality employers. As young professionals within the towns move out, people from further afield look to move in so as to be within easy commuting distance of London without to pay the capital's extortionate property prices. As more of these types of migrants look to move into the towns, new estates have to be built to house them driving up house prices and eventually creating a commuter town with miles of housing estates but facilities befitting a town half the size.This Chain of events has left much of the South East's smaller towns a washed up collection of concrete shells devoid of any plus point other than 'it's close to London'. Although naturally this happens all over the country to some degree, it is most damaging in the South East where the sheer size of the capital and the opportunities within exaggerates the pull factors far beyond those of any other Town in Britain.
What else are you meant to be thinking about during a 2-2 draw in Grays??

Keep the Yellow flag flying high!!

Next Monday’s game against Rushden should be notable for two reasons, firstly it is the first league match to be televised at the Kassam. More importantly however the above yellow flag will be unfurled for the first in what is a deliberate attempt to make the Kassam Stadium more yellow. Why people insist on bringing St George's flags with 'OUFC' written in the corners is beyond me. People complain that the ground is too blue and has no yellow yet they fill up the stand with red and white flags, St George’s or not - don't Swindon play in those colours...!?!? When the subject is brought up there is usually some grunt of a reply about loving club and country, but as far as I am concerned flags should be in club colours otherwise they just look daft. Rant over. Well done to the brave soul who purchased the material and spent Friday night and Sunday making it.

Cups and downs...

For reasons which I'm not entirely sure I understand, I didn't go to any football this weekend despite both Oxford and Banbury being at home. I had decided after the boredom of Tuesday that I did not need to pay another £12 plus bus fare to watch FA Trophy football for the second time in a week and would instead go to Banbury. When the time came to leave however, I could no longer be bothered to leave the house and spend around £15 travelling to and watching a mid-table Southern League game so I retired upstairs with a toasted cheese sandwich and attempted to listen to the game on Radio Oxford. Despite drifting in and out of sleep for most of the second half it sounded like a good match, we seem to be scoring again but worryingly conceded two goals at home. The final score of 2-2 was a little disappointing and needless to say I was not making plans for the midweek replay at the Shay. A few miles to the north Banbury drew 1-1 with Merthyr Tydfil it what was by all accounts a thoroughly missable game.On Tuesday Oxford went up to the Shay and put in a good performance but ultimately went down 2-1. Whilst going out of the FA Trophy is no great drama it is yet another defeat to bounce back from and more alarmingly it took the shock of going 2-0 down to finally wake them up and start playing. Although the second half performance was excellent we cannot plan a season on good last half hours otherwise we will be in this league for many years to come.Whilst Oxford were getting to grips with the Shay Banbury played host to struggling Chippenham. It seems they've finally hit a bit of home form and comprehensively thumped the carrot crunchers from Wiltshire 5-0, with four of those goals coming in the first half. The fifth goal scored towards the Town end by hat-trick hero Johnny Gardener was a beautiful curling shot from the edge of the area that (despite the cliché) would have been a goal of the month contender had it been in the Premiership. A poor crowd of 248 was disappointing but if Banbury continue to pick up results then the crowds will surely come back.

In Profile: TSV 1860 München

It is impossible to talk about German football without immediately thinking of the beautiful city of Munich and it's legendary club Bayern, however until the late 60's it was the now little mentioned TSV 1860 which was the city's flagship club. Beginning life in 1848 as a gymnastic association the club was not formally recognised until 1860, having been banned by local authorities who believed sports clubs to be promoting 'Republican activities'. Despite the name it was not until1899 that the football team would be formed and another three years until it would play regularly.In 1911 the famous Lion from which the club gets it's nickname 'Die Löwen' was added to the crest. In the same year the team moved to a plot of land in Grünwalder Straße which by 1926 had grown into a 40,000 capacity stadium and where 1860 would continue to play until the 1990's. The inter-war years were solid if unspectacular for 1860 who were by now competing in Germany's upper leagues, with two appearances ( and defeats) in the German National Championship being the highlights. It was not until 1942 when with football going ahead despite the war, they lifted their first silverware beating Shalke 04 in the German Cup final.After the war 1860 continued to play as a top flight Oberliga Sud side (although briefly suffering relegation between 1953 and 1956) and slowly began to establish themselves as one of the top sides in Germany.The 60's were to the Lion's most successful era, in 1963 they won the Oberliga Sud gaining promotion to the newly formed Bundesliga, and a year later winning the German Cup for the second time. The next two seasons were to be the climax of 1860 rise when in 1965 they finished runners to West Ham in the UEFA Cup before going on to win the Bundesliga for the first and only time in 1966. Success however can be cruelly short-lived and three seasons after being crowned Champions 1860 were relegated whilst city rivals Bayern were beginning to lay the foundations of what would go on to be Germany's most successful club. For the next 20 years 1860 would languish in relative obscurity until a brief two season return to the Bundesliga in 1980 led to relegation and bankruptcy with the club being demoted two divisions in 1982 to the Amateur Oberliga Bayern. 1860 would spend the next decade in the wilderness of the regional leagues.In the early nineties the club was rebuilt thanks mainly to the hard work of President Karl-Heinz Wildmoser. Having recently moved in to the Olympic Stadium to ground share with Bayern, the Lions earned successive promotions in 1994 and 1995 to reclaim their place in the Bundesliga. By mixing shrewd signings of proven veterans like Thomas Häßler, Jens Jeremies and Peter Nowak with a strong youth set up, 1860 were able to establish themselves as a solid mid table side which hit a peak by qualifying for the 1996 UEFA cup. There would be one final jaunt into Europe when in 2000 1860 finished 4th in the Bundesliga (doing the double over city rivals Bayern) gaining entry to the Champions League qualifying rounds. Although they were knocked out before the group phase they were able to enter the UEFA Cup reaching the 3rd round before losing to Italian side AC Parma.Sadly in 2004 1860 crashed out of the Bundesliga and did not make the immediate return that many fans were expecting despite moving into to the newly built Allianz Arena which they will again share with Bayern. They are currently sitting in 6th place in Bundesliga 2 (as of the 2006/2007 Winter break) 10 points off leaders Karlsruher SC, but are mounting a strong challenge for the play-off places.

It may be tinpot but a win is a win...

A first half penalty from Rob Duffy was enough to send Oxford stumbling into the second round of the FA Trophy at Minchery Farm last night. We are so short of confidence that any win will be gladly received but last night was nothing short of terrible and the penalty was in the end the only shot on target we had. To not be able test a 16 year old youth team non-league 'keeper isn't exactly promising for the weeks to come and although we pretty much controled the match, just shading a Conference South with an injury list worse than the Somme was a poor showing.
Still... We've won a game at last and on Saturday Halifax come down for round 2 in what will be a much tougher game. Hopefully the better class of opponent will force us to raise our game to something approaching acceptable. I may just go and watch Banbury play Merthyr Tydfil instead as I'm not really up for watching another FA Trophy game in front of no fans for a tenner. Hopefully we will win through as I really do want to do well in this competition.

A Wet Weekend...

What do you say about a 0-0 draw with no genuine positives? Well basically not a lot. By some freak fixture listing we were give 3 home games out of 4 over Christmas yet despite lots of huffing and puffing and dagnabit even some proper fightin' talk, we picked up only 3 points. Saturday's draw against Morecambe was yet another frustrating result and despite the fact Morecambe are a good side it was a win we badly needed and expected. Dagenham did well to defeat Woking 3-2 meaning that we stay second with the gap between us and the Daggers now 3 points.One minor good point from Saturday was that the new loan signings look pretty good. Georges Santos is a superb defender clearly better than this level and mid-fielder Danny Rose also had a good game once he'd got used to the messy business that is Conference football. Being Man Utd's reserve team captain it's fair to assume that he is a player of some quality and will improve the more he plays.Tonight we play Lewes of the Conference South in a FA Trophy 1st round replay. Although we cannot field our new signings Lewes do not have a keeper so I guess we are at some quite significant advantage...
Anything less than a win will not be acceptable.

Review in Photo's - Summer

In trying to cope with the boredom of the close season (World Cup = good but no substitute for live football) we took a day off work and went down to London for the first Tuesday of Wimbledon.


































Two months after being relegated, Chairman Nick Merry offered fans the chance to come along to a family fun day. Everyone was allowed on the pitch and Jim Smith was on hand to sign autographs!!













Banbury had a couple of decent pre-season games against Cheltenham and Coventry. I took some pics of the Cheltenham game but not of Coventry which was a shame as over 1000 turned up!! They also beat an Oxford XI 3-0 but the less said about that the better...
















Our Show-piece friendly was a sell out against a very strong Man Utd XI. Although we lost 4-1, it was a great performance. This was Ronaldo's first game in England since his World Cup 'antics', something not lost on the national press who gave us blanket coverage then complained when we booed him?!?!













One of the most eagerly anticipated fixtures of the year- Weymouth away, was given an extra boost by being the August bank holiday fixture. A 1-1 draw was the first points we dropped but the last minute equaliser made the day.

Christmas/New Years Football

Firstly let me start by saying that I will not be uploading photo's of Boxing Day's record crowd of 11,065 as like a prat I forgot my camera. Shame really as the game was so boring I could have happily spent most of it snapping away rather than shouting at Eddie 'shoot? what is shoot?' Anaclet and the numerous mortally wounded Woking players rolling around hoping to run the clock down. In the end despite 6 minutes injury time and a giant flag (!)the U's just couldn't find a way past a resolute (and time wasting) Woking side and the game finished a disappointing 0-0, fortunately Dagenham were held at home by Grays so the 2 point cushion at the top of the table remained intact.Four days later Oxford entertained Crawley for our second Christmas home game and once again this one was hugely frustrating. The East Stand was in surprisingly good voice early on but Oxford were lethargic and looked largely uninterested, failing to put any real pressure on the Crawley keeper. On the stroke of half time (4 minutes into what was meant to be 2 minutes added time...) thing got even worse as Tony Scully rounded Billy Turley and finished from a tight angle to give the Essex team a 1-0 half time lead. Oh Dear. The second half saw a much more attacking Oxford side with Yemi once again the stand out player and with 11 minutes to go Rob Duffy equalised to spare our blushes but not as it turned out our top spot. Only a few minutes before Duffy's goal news filtered through that the Daggers had gone 1-0 up and they held that lead to go top of the Conference on goal difference to cap of a week that has been pretty depressing for us.An interesting New Year's resolution for the men in Yellow could have been to stop the rot and go to Exeter and get back to winning ways. However the amount of injuries picked up from the Crawley game meant the travelling squad resembled something akin to post-Bubonic plague Europe. When only fit striker Steve Basham limped off early on it clearly wasn't going to be our day (again), and despite playing with a new found vigour the U's went down 2-1 with ex Plymouth player Rufus Brevitt scoring an own goal much to the amusement of the home fans.Aside from Oxford I only managed to get to one other game which was Banbury v Wealdstone. Banbury won 3-1 in what was their first home league win since August 19th!! I had also hoped to go along to the New Year's day game against Halesowen but left it having got back from an all night do in Birmingham only a few hours earlier I gave it a miss...







Raving in Birmingham...

Review in Photo's - MAY

Here is the first part of a summery of things I did whilst I was not updating 'Fans Life'. All the pictures and many more can be found at: . Photo Home Page

Penulatimate game 05/06. Oxford battle to a 1-1 draw at Wrexham but slip into the relegation place for the first time in their history.



























A last minute 3-2 home defeat to Orient sends Oxford down to the non-leagues. Not a dry eye in the house...














A week after getting relegated I went to Bordeaux to unwind and hopefully get a ticket for the final home game against Marseille. Didn't get a ticket but never mind, just getting away was good enough.
















































Whilst in the Wine capital of the world I went on a journey to the Pyranees to the small town of Lourdes to lay some ghosts to rest. In 1999 our sixth went with Birmingham diocese as a volunteer group. various things happened on the trip that didn't end particularly well. This was a good chance to grab some closure.


























If I'm honest then I'm not a particularly Religious person but the place does have something about it.