Thursday 3 March 2011

Cruel Game, Football

I am thoroughly miserable. The last few days of football have not turned out as I would have wished. First, there was Saturday’s appalling injustice where Oxford United somehow managed to lose at home to Hereford. This was then followed this up by a similarly depressing result for the U’s at Sincil Bank on Tuesday evening, home of little Lincoln City. To cap it all off, the next day, my University team (Bristol) lost in the final minute of a top table clash against our arch-rivals, the University of West of England (or UWE for short). The image of the unpleasant UWE boys running madly round our pitch screaming with delight at our misfortune is unfortunately etched firmly in my memory.

Back to the Lincoln game though, which was quite ridiculous. Our three conceded goals were all utterly calamitous; the first was a deflected shot that hit the post and found its way at the feet of their striker to tap in, the second was a cross that Harry Worley managed to crash into his own net and the third was a shocking sliced clearance by Anthony Tonkin that looped over Ryan Clarke. Yes, you heard it right, two own goals. Tonkin’s could quite could seriously end up on one of those DVD’s that are full of footballing mishaps hosted by an excitable chatterbox such as Ian Wright.

This result has dealt a major blow to Oxford’s promotion push. Unless we start killing teams off, we will not achieve our goal of climbing into League 1. We can begin by hammering bottom of the league Stockport away this Saturday. That would at least help to momentarily erase that painful image from my mind...