One Game at a Time
Oxford United (H) September 13th
Of all the pre match previews I thought I would ever have to write; this one has the strangest feeling to it.
It isn’t simply the death of a reigning monarch, one who in all probability was the only one any of us had ever known. To have such a momentous change, on top of a change of Prime Minister, and during an economic maelstrom, all whilst a war is being fought on mainland Europe, means sport in general and football in particular suddenly assumes a somewhat lesser importance.
As I wrote, however, on PASOTI, when the debate was ongoing about potential postponements, Queen Elizabeth the Second was the embodiment of keeping going, and if we have opponents arriving, I feel it would be disrespectful not to disrespect them, in the same way I have done for their predecessors.
So, the Yellow Peril arrive, having been deprived of the opportunity to tame some Shrews, and no doubt seeking to right their managers perceived injustices towards the end of last season. That match, which featured a superb Joe 90 volley, and an equally superb assistant referees right arm raise, led to the loss of, if not the rear wheel of the Ox’s promotion challenge, a definite removal of the trainer wheels, judging by the speed with which they then rode into the ditch of finishing eighth.
Sadly, as we all know, the next cab off the rank to follow into that ditch of not quite doing enough was liveried in green and white, and so, here we are again.
With ex-Premier League September having lost one of the participants to postponement, it might be worth remembering that back in the days when the Premier League was simply Division One, plucky Oxford became the youngest side (in terms of club league age) to reach those dizzy heights in 1985. Admittedly they held the notional title for only a year before those perennial japesters, the Crazy Gang of Wimbledon, gained promotion to Division One the following season, having only attained League status in 1977.
Oxford joined the League as new boys in 1962, replacing Accrington Stanley, and inadvertently creating a whole new revenue stream for Ian Rush, only two years after becoming Oxford United. Prior to that the club had been known as Headington United, a small suburb of Oxford. Full disclosure. As a seven-year-old who attended Sandhills Primary, Headington, my first ever match was at the Manor Ground…seeing the light a couple of years later having moved to Cornwall.
Headington, like our recently postponed opponents The Wednesday were formed as a subset of a cricket team, and in a similar fashion as Bolton, also driven by the local vicar to try and occupy the misspent youth of the locality. Created in 1893, with the United added in the following year when they absorbed a local rival team, the team were known locally as “the boys from up the hill’. Given they still have centre back John Mousinho on the books as a player, even though he is around seventy-three, just “over the hill” might suffice today.
After pottering around the locality, the club alighted on the Manor Ground in 1925, which remained their home until the fateful 2000/1 season. The Manor Ground was a classic non-league ground in a couple of respects. Firstly, it evolved as a mish mash of building styles and so had four stands that looked like they had been built by four different architects, which pretty much, they had. Secondly it had the almost mandatory non-league end to end slope down to the London End (where the home fans congregated) and which was reputed to be to their advantage when used to discomfort away defences.
The ground also has a claim to being one of the first grounds to host floodlit football, when in December 1950 they played a game under lights against local rivals Banbury Spencer. Although there are, however, records of floodlit games played as early as 1878 (Bramall Lane) and on Merseyside in 1949 when South Liverpool played a largely barefoot Nigerian Touring XI. There is also a record of an earlier friendly between Southampton and Bournemouth, although all the above would have been rendered academic had Herbert Chapman not insisted on never playing under the newly installed lights at Highbury in the 1930’s.
Having reached the League, Oxford then became the first Fourth division side to reach the FA Cup quarter finals, losing at home to Preston North End, a defeat they avenged in the League Cup in their next meeting the following season. By then the club, skippered by Ron “The Tank” Atkinson was on a sustained charge up the leagues, reaching Division 2 in 1968. They were to surpass this surge in the mid-eighties when they became the only club to win successive promotions from tier three to the top tier. They featured players like Kevin Brock, Ray Houghton and John Aldridge, who was at one stage a potential Argyle player when we brought the legend that is Tommy Tynan from Newport but turned down the chance to also bring his strike partner. For younger readers, John Aldridge is statistically a bit like Dom Telford based on last season’s scoring charts. Admittedly he did also play in a couple of World Cups. (Aldridge that is, Dom still has time on his side though).
The mid-eighties were the zenith for the U’s, although the three years at the peak of the league pyramid, and the winning of the Milk Cup, beating QPR three nil were a high price to pay for the ownership consequences of having been rescued from financial oblivion by one Robert Maxwell. The Czech publishing magnate and ex Labour MP wove United into his labyrinth of companies, and very quickly caused consternation by proposing a merger with nearby rivals Reading to form the putative club, Thames Valley Royals. This chimera club would alternate home games between Oxford and Reading before alighting on a new stadium somewhere in the middle. That guardian of the rights and interests of fans and clubs, the Football League were straight on it, as you might expect, with their Chairman Jack Dunnett calling the scheme, “a bold and imaginative move that I shall be watching with interest.”
Say what?
Despite those three years of top tier survival, and a trophy, all was not well at the Manor, and the bouncing Czech as Maxwell was nicknamed soon had his eyes on other, greater, prizes, in this case Derby County. Despite the League creating rules preventing multiple ownership of clubs Maxwell decamped to Derby in 1987. This left Oxford in the capable and independent hands of, well Kevin Maxwell, several Maxwell lackeys and, later to be famous for quite another reason, daughter Ghislaine Maxwell. Still, they did host Sir Alex Fergusons first game as the Manchester United boss, and, as if annoyed that he had replaced their hero Big Ron Atkinson at Old Trafford, handed him a 2-0 defeat.
Jim Smith, the man who had piloted them to their lofty peak, had left and under new manager Mark Lawrenson, every bit as good a manager as his punditry suggests he would be, the club was relegated, with Lawro departing when star forward Dean Saunders was sold, despite his having a promise from Kevin Maxwell for this not to happen.
Saunders destination? Derby County, of course.
The complexity of Maxwell (Robert’s) non ownership of the club became less opaque when in 1991, as his business empire began to implode under multiple allegations of fraud, Maxwell took part in and won the 50 meters straight down swimming gala when he took a dive off the back of his yacht bound for Gran Canaria, the Lady Ghislaine. Well would you want a yacht named Ian? Or Kevin? As more and more holes in various Maxwell Company pension funds appeared, and a large chunk of the so-called transfer fee between Derby and Oxford simply vanished, United unravelled quicker than MK Dons without Twine, and a descent began that was to end with them becoming the first major trophy winning side to leave the Football League.
During that descent, one brief bright spot for Oxford was when an unexpected victory on the last day of the 91/2 season at Tranmere allowed them to slip out of the relegation places at the expense of, you guessed it, Argyle. We all blamed Speedie for his hat trick, and perhaps Dave Kemp for his playing style, but if Tranmere could defend, we would have stayed up.
By the time we went down that season Shilton had arrived as player manager, and so perhaps that explains why our only shared manager is the aforementioned Kemp. In the final season of the Manor Ground Kemp was appointed by Director of Football and all-around popular visitor to Home Park Joe Kinnear. Kemp lasted thirty-one games of which he lost twenty-one and suffered the ignominy of having each Oxford goal in a forlorn 3-1 victory over Swansea greeted by cheers of Kemp Out after each one. He didn’t make the final ever game at the Manor, a tame 1-1 draw with Port Vale.
By now the legal and financial future of the club had been resolved and new owner Firoz Kassam (briefly a tyre kicker in the Argyle administration) had bought the club and stadium and moved the club to the modestly named Ikea style Kassam Stadium. The new ground which had everything except one of its four sides and an atmosphere failed to arrest the slide and after Kassam sold up the club fell out of the league after a 3-2 defeat at Leyton Orient in 2006. Ironically, they were replaced by Accrington Stanley, whose bankruptcy had allowed them to join the league in the first place.
A four year wilderness ended by a Chris Wilder inspired promotion brought them back into the EFL, and since then a number of eighth place finishes, the latest being last seasons, have only been punctuated by a single promotion, under Michael Appleton to League One where they remain, frustratingly, the football equivalent of a bridesmaid.
Since 2018 they have been in the hands of Karl Robinson who has been busy building his filing cabinet of grudges since then. Argyle finally gained their place in the drawer marked P for the heinous sin of playing their music too loud when we won at Home Park and daring to celebrate with our fans after the game. Christmas must be a barrel of laughs in the Robinson household as the children whisper carols while trying to open presents without the reused brown paper rustling.
The current seasons rebuild of the squad has met with mixed reviews by U’s fans, primarily due to Karl’s apparent obsession with wingers and aversion to wing backs, although the retention of seemingly Blackpool bound Cameron Branagan, the penalty maestro who managed the odd four against Gillingham last season in one away match was a coup. Like Argyle. a marquee signing, in their case Yanic Wildshut was ruled out for a substantial period almost as soon as the season started. The surprising deadline day arrival of a Lazio based Dutch Jamaican wing back is still in limbo after work permit issues.
And so Tuesday night will be a first chance for the Argyle family to come together and honour the loss of our monarch. Sadly, it will also be a chance to honour the loss of one of our greatest and most popular managers as well. Dave Smith, forever, for reasons unknown even to him, to be known as Ciderman led the Greens for four glorious years, and we don’t have many, culminating in the return of Sir Tommy and the four zip destruction of the Wurzels to gain promotion and after that perhaps the closest we got for many years before or since to the Promised Land.
Last season we lost Paul Mariner before his time. Oxford too lost a legend, in tragic circumstances, when Joey Beauchamp succumbed to his demons.
Tuesday will be more than a game. It will be a coming together. A release of loss, gratitude and that most hard of all emotions to express, love. Love of disparate people who come to a city and make it their own. Or who realise that being with their family and friends means more than riches and chasing fame and fortune. Whose efforts and commitment and service touch thousands and sometimes millions of people who are strangers but for whom those moments live forever.
Remember them. Enjoy the game.
COYG!
Oxford United (H) September 13th
Of all the pre match previews I thought I would ever have to write; this one has the strangest feeling to it.
It isn’t simply the death of a reigning monarch, one who in all probability was the only one any of us had ever known. To have such a momentous change, on top of a change of Prime Minister, and during an economic maelstrom, all whilst a war is being fought on mainland Europe, means sport in general and football in particular suddenly assumes a somewhat lesser importance.
As I wrote, however, on PASOTI, when the debate was ongoing about potential postponements, Queen Elizabeth the Second was the embodiment of keeping going, and if we have opponents arriving, I feel it would be disrespectful not to disrespect them, in the same way I have done for their predecessors.
So, the Yellow Peril arrive, having been deprived of the opportunity to tame some Shrews, and no doubt seeking to right their managers perceived injustices towards the end of last season. That match, which featured a superb Joe 90 volley, and an equally superb assistant referees right arm raise, led to the loss of, if not the rear wheel of the Ox’s promotion challenge, a definite removal of the trainer wheels, judging by the speed with which they then rode into the ditch of finishing eighth.
Sadly, as we all know, the next cab off the rank to follow into that ditch of not quite doing enough was liveried in green and white, and so, here we are again.
With ex-Premier League September having lost one of the participants to postponement, it might be worth remembering that back in the days when the Premier League was simply Division One, plucky Oxford became the youngest side (in terms of club league age) to reach those dizzy heights in 1985. Admittedly they held the notional title for only a year before those perennial japesters, the Crazy Gang of Wimbledon, gained promotion to Division One the following season, having only attained League status in 1977.
Oxford joined the League as new boys in 1962, replacing Accrington Stanley, and inadvertently creating a whole new revenue stream for Ian Rush, only two years after becoming Oxford United. Prior to that the club had been known as Headington United, a small suburb of Oxford. Full disclosure. As a seven-year-old who attended Sandhills Primary, Headington, my first ever match was at the Manor Ground…seeing the light a couple of years later having moved to Cornwall.
Headington, like our recently postponed opponents The Wednesday were formed as a subset of a cricket team, and in a similar fashion as Bolton, also driven by the local vicar to try and occupy the misspent youth of the locality. Created in 1893, with the United added in the following year when they absorbed a local rival team, the team were known locally as “the boys from up the hill’. Given they still have centre back John Mousinho on the books as a player, even though he is around seventy-three, just “over the hill” might suffice today.
After pottering around the locality, the club alighted on the Manor Ground in 1925, which remained their home until the fateful 2000/1 season. The Manor Ground was a classic non-league ground in a couple of respects. Firstly, it evolved as a mish mash of building styles and so had four stands that looked like they had been built by four different architects, which pretty much, they had. Secondly it had the almost mandatory non-league end to end slope down to the London End (where the home fans congregated) and which was reputed to be to their advantage when used to discomfort away defences.
The ground also has a claim to being one of the first grounds to host floodlit football, when in December 1950 they played a game under lights against local rivals Banbury Spencer. Although there are, however, records of floodlit games played as early as 1878 (Bramall Lane) and on Merseyside in 1949 when South Liverpool played a largely barefoot Nigerian Touring XI. There is also a record of an earlier friendly between Southampton and Bournemouth, although all the above would have been rendered academic had Herbert Chapman not insisted on never playing under the newly installed lights at Highbury in the 1930’s.
Having reached the League, Oxford then became the first Fourth division side to reach the FA Cup quarter finals, losing at home to Preston North End, a defeat they avenged in the League Cup in their next meeting the following season. By then the club, skippered by Ron “The Tank” Atkinson was on a sustained charge up the leagues, reaching Division 2 in 1968. They were to surpass this surge in the mid-eighties when they became the only club to win successive promotions from tier three to the top tier. They featured players like Kevin Brock, Ray Houghton and John Aldridge, who was at one stage a potential Argyle player when we brought the legend that is Tommy Tynan from Newport but turned down the chance to also bring his strike partner. For younger readers, John Aldridge is statistically a bit like Dom Telford based on last season’s scoring charts. Admittedly he did also play in a couple of World Cups. (Aldridge that is, Dom still has time on his side though).
The mid-eighties were the zenith for the U’s, although the three years at the peak of the league pyramid, and the winning of the Milk Cup, beating QPR three nil were a high price to pay for the ownership consequences of having been rescued from financial oblivion by one Robert Maxwell. The Czech publishing magnate and ex Labour MP wove United into his labyrinth of companies, and very quickly caused consternation by proposing a merger with nearby rivals Reading to form the putative club, Thames Valley Royals. This chimera club would alternate home games between Oxford and Reading before alighting on a new stadium somewhere in the middle. That guardian of the rights and interests of fans and clubs, the Football League were straight on it, as you might expect, with their Chairman Jack Dunnett calling the scheme, “a bold and imaginative move that I shall be watching with interest.”
Say what?
Despite those three years of top tier survival, and a trophy, all was not well at the Manor, and the bouncing Czech as Maxwell was nicknamed soon had his eyes on other, greater, prizes, in this case Derby County. Despite the League creating rules preventing multiple ownership of clubs Maxwell decamped to Derby in 1987. This left Oxford in the capable and independent hands of, well Kevin Maxwell, several Maxwell lackeys and, later to be famous for quite another reason, daughter Ghislaine Maxwell. Still, they did host Sir Alex Fergusons first game as the Manchester United boss, and, as if annoyed that he had replaced their hero Big Ron Atkinson at Old Trafford, handed him a 2-0 defeat.
Jim Smith, the man who had piloted them to their lofty peak, had left and under new manager Mark Lawrenson, every bit as good a manager as his punditry suggests he would be, the club was relegated, with Lawro departing when star forward Dean Saunders was sold, despite his having a promise from Kevin Maxwell for this not to happen.
Saunders destination? Derby County, of course.
The complexity of Maxwell (Robert’s) non ownership of the club became less opaque when in 1991, as his business empire began to implode under multiple allegations of fraud, Maxwell took part in and won the 50 meters straight down swimming gala when he took a dive off the back of his yacht bound for Gran Canaria, the Lady Ghislaine. Well would you want a yacht named Ian? Or Kevin? As more and more holes in various Maxwell Company pension funds appeared, and a large chunk of the so-called transfer fee between Derby and Oxford simply vanished, United unravelled quicker than MK Dons without Twine, and a descent began that was to end with them becoming the first major trophy winning side to leave the Football League.
During that descent, one brief bright spot for Oxford was when an unexpected victory on the last day of the 91/2 season at Tranmere allowed them to slip out of the relegation places at the expense of, you guessed it, Argyle. We all blamed Speedie for his hat trick, and perhaps Dave Kemp for his playing style, but if Tranmere could defend, we would have stayed up.
By the time we went down that season Shilton had arrived as player manager, and so perhaps that explains why our only shared manager is the aforementioned Kemp. In the final season of the Manor Ground Kemp was appointed by Director of Football and all-around popular visitor to Home Park Joe Kinnear. Kemp lasted thirty-one games of which he lost twenty-one and suffered the ignominy of having each Oxford goal in a forlorn 3-1 victory over Swansea greeted by cheers of Kemp Out after each one. He didn’t make the final ever game at the Manor, a tame 1-1 draw with Port Vale.
By now the legal and financial future of the club had been resolved and new owner Firoz Kassam (briefly a tyre kicker in the Argyle administration) had bought the club and stadium and moved the club to the modestly named Ikea style Kassam Stadium. The new ground which had everything except one of its four sides and an atmosphere failed to arrest the slide and after Kassam sold up the club fell out of the league after a 3-2 defeat at Leyton Orient in 2006. Ironically, they were replaced by Accrington Stanley, whose bankruptcy had allowed them to join the league in the first place.
A four year wilderness ended by a Chris Wilder inspired promotion brought them back into the EFL, and since then a number of eighth place finishes, the latest being last seasons, have only been punctuated by a single promotion, under Michael Appleton to League One where they remain, frustratingly, the football equivalent of a bridesmaid.
Since 2018 they have been in the hands of Karl Robinson who has been busy building his filing cabinet of grudges since then. Argyle finally gained their place in the drawer marked P for the heinous sin of playing their music too loud when we won at Home Park and daring to celebrate with our fans after the game. Christmas must be a barrel of laughs in the Robinson household as the children whisper carols while trying to open presents without the reused brown paper rustling.
The current seasons rebuild of the squad has met with mixed reviews by U’s fans, primarily due to Karl’s apparent obsession with wingers and aversion to wing backs, although the retention of seemingly Blackpool bound Cameron Branagan, the penalty maestro who managed the odd four against Gillingham last season in one away match was a coup. Like Argyle. a marquee signing, in their case Yanic Wildshut was ruled out for a substantial period almost as soon as the season started. The surprising deadline day arrival of a Lazio based Dutch Jamaican wing back is still in limbo after work permit issues.
And so Tuesday night will be a first chance for the Argyle family to come together and honour the loss of our monarch. Sadly, it will also be a chance to honour the loss of one of our greatest and most popular managers as well. Dave Smith, forever, for reasons unknown even to him, to be known as Ciderman led the Greens for four glorious years, and we don’t have many, culminating in the return of Sir Tommy and the four zip destruction of the Wurzels to gain promotion and after that perhaps the closest we got for many years before or since to the Promised Land.
Last season we lost Paul Mariner before his time. Oxford too lost a legend, in tragic circumstances, when Joey Beauchamp succumbed to his demons.
Tuesday will be more than a game. It will be a coming together. A release of loss, gratitude and that most hard of all emotions to express, love. Love of disparate people who come to a city and make it their own. Or who realise that being with their family and friends means more than riches and chasing fame and fortune. Whose efforts and commitment and service touch thousands and sometimes millions of people who are strangers but for whom those moments live forever.
Remember them. Enjoy the game.
COYG!
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