Saturday 10th August 2024

Ko 12:30 Championship

OXFORD UNITED 2 (Harris 28 Brannagan 58)

NORWICH CITY 0

Att 11,333 (1,476 away)

Entry (seat in South Stand Upper Premium) £35

Programme £4

17:30 League 1

BRISTOL ROVERS 1 (Bilongo 90+1)

NORTHAMPTON TOWN 0

Att 8,529 (586 away)

Entry (Home covered terrace) £20

Monthly magazine £5.99

As the coach left Wembley after Oxford United’s play-off final win, I took a deep breath. It was less a feeling of celebration, that was yet to come back at the pub, more a feeling of “Now what?” I hadn’t expected promotion, but when it happened I began to look at the consequences.

We’d gone from being one of the bigger clubs in League 1 to being unquestionably the smallest in the Championship. I anticipated the ground’s 12,500 capacity to be insufficient for the division, especially when 1,000 seats are lost to segregation. Given the club’s short time left at Grenoble Road, there seemed little reason to build a fourth stand either as a temporary or permanent measure.

That pointed to a massive increase in ticket prices so all credit to the board, for keeping the rises to a minimum, even when that 11,500 real capacity was going to consist of 7,500 season ticket holders, 1,500 away fans, 1,000 members, with only around 1,500 available for open sale for each game. I really should have expected that my season ticket this season doesn’t have included in it the right to buy additional tickets. I took out an additional membership at £30 to be able to buy an extra ticket. Talk about taxing loyalty!

The club’s senior management have made it clear they want the club to be in the top 30 clubs in England. Now no fan in their right mind wouldn’t want that, but I did wonder what this season might bring? Can we succeed in the Championship without losing our soul? I’d seen things that worried me, the communications officer left in March only to pop up a day later at of all places Oxford City. The idea seems to be to make the club act like a “Big club” but at what cost?

But this wasn’t really about figures, more a feeling of a club risking losing its sense of self. I’m an Oxford fan first and foremost because it’s where I’m from, but part of it is the personalities that make it what it is. Examples include the supporters’ merchandise table in the Quad Bar. If you want a team sheet, it’s where you head. They’ve had pressure on them as to what they can and cannot sell for what seems very little purpose.

Even the trip to Wembley saw two long-standing volunteer photographers denied accreditation in favour of paid freelancers. Would there be a sense of what the Rolling Stones must have felt when they left the Crawdaddy Club, or the Beatles, the Cavern? Oddly it took a friend from Germany to bring it all into sharp focus.

Andreas and I go back a long way, watching football on a massive temporary terrace in Sweden outside a prison in Luxembourg and most amusingly him trying to teach Robyn how to count in German, whilst watching a game in Liechtenstein! He’d spotted that he could watch Oxford at 12:30 then Bristol Rovers at 17:30 if we got clever with the exit from Oxford and parking in Bristol.

That meant arriving at Grenoble Road over 2 hours before kick-off to secure one of the last spots on the East stand car park, a trip to the overspill car park would have meant missing the later kick-off. But what was the Championship like so many years after our last stint in the division?

I approached it all in much the same way as I’d approached Wembley, assume a defeat, but be pleasantly surprised at anything better. That, in retrospect did a massive disservice to the board, who’d recruited 16 players and ensured only one player left that we’d have liked to have retained- Josh Murphy.

And save for the pointless fireworks before the game, it was the Oxford United I knew, just with a full house roaring a most welcome home win. Yes, there are annoyances, the early kick off at the behest of Sky trampling all over local youth football is definately one. Youth football takes place in Saturday mornings, so no young player can both play their game then go and see their local Championship club if they kick off early.

That said, at the end we dashed back to the car with me happy at both the result and the overall experience. At the moment the annoyances and costs of the Championship seemed acceptable, for now at least.

The trip to Bristol was straightforward and the issue I’d identified, the street parking by the Memorial Ground, nullified with the help of Caz and Lucy from the “Her Game Too” campaign. As an aside, I support the campaign without reservation, not least after hearing some of the comments my wife Robyn has had to put up with on our trips watching football. Not that you’ll ever see her on the Mem’s home terrace!

With my tongue firmly in my cheek I do tend to see Rovers as the “Which Matt Taylor” club. There are of course two Matt Taylors, the current Rovers manager who played for Exeter and Charlton and Matty Taylor who helped the Gas to two promotions but rather blotted his copybook by moving to Bristol City in highly controversial circumstances. Like I said make sure you know your Matt Taylors!!

I’d bought tickets for the home terrace purely as it is the nearest entrance to where we’d parked, but it proved to be an inspired move. We got to the Mem early enough to visit the club shop, and I’m saddened to report that their programme is no more, replaced by a monthly magazine, that in effect becomes a programne for their 3 scheduled home games that month. I did hear one or two fans grumbling that the quarters on the new home shirts are the wrong way round; try comparing the shirts with the club badge! Football fans do tend to be rather precious with regard to such things!

Being early gave me the chance to explain to Andreas how the Memorial Ground used to be Bristol rugby ground, and only an insolvency event saw the ownership transfer from rugby union to association rules. It speaks volumes that the Gas’s improvements to the place meant he hadn’t spotted the former use.

For me is was the chance to watch a game at a ground akin to the Oxford United’s former home, the Manor Ground. I grew up watching football stood behind the London Road goal, on a covered terracing and the roar of the crowd was just as deafening as it was back then!

Of course the difficulty Bristol Rovers have is all that terracing is incompatible with the Championship. Plans for a new stadium at the Fruit Market seem to have been dropped in favour of improving the Mem, which does seem more than a little difficult if the plan is to follow Oxford up.

But in there and then it was a wonderful excuse to enjoy a game in an old-style ground, and I loved every minute of it, even of the game was both poor and of a noticably lower quality than what we’d seen earlier. But the crowd ( and the balloons from the fiesta) more than made up of it, and the terrace rocked when the Gas scrambled in the latest of late winners.

Thanks to Andreas I’d had the chance to sample EFL football in two almost entirely different ways. Some of it was where in each ground we’d chosen to watch the game, so please don’t compare the prices!

I do wonder how both clubs fans will be watching their football in 10 years time. Hopefully Oxford will be based at their new ground adjacent to Oxford Parkway station but will Bristol Rovers fans still be able to watch their side from that almost visceral terrace? I for one would be sorry if that were lost.