Yellows 1 Kettering Town 1

There are few more endearing images in Oxford’s history than Nick Harris at the Milk Cup Final patrolling the Wembley running track with an enormous portable radio transmitter on his back. Nowadays that amount of technology can be fitted into your average iPod Shuffle, back then it was like seeing a lower league funded moon landing.

Perhaps this is what inspired Radio Oxford to employ (Kass Stad) Kate Adams as a post-match roving reporter. Unlike Nick Harris, Adams is a pretty blonde, which seems like a low pre-requisite for a radio career. I guess the boys – who you get the impression don’t tend to talk to girls much – like having her around; you’re only as young as the woman you feel and all that.

There is presumably a panel of linguists and football historians working on the questions she asks of passing fans. The sheer banality of her approach cannot be the work of one person alone.

On Saturday she asked “We’ve got one point against Kettering, is that enough?” (or something). One punter, no doubt dragging his fists along the floor as he hauled his club foot towards her, claimed that the Kettering result was proof that we wouldn’t even make the play-offs.

Now, I know better than to take any notice of this carnival of morons, but this view seemed indicative of those being shared around the ground.

But let’s think this through, the Hayes result was a freak, everything about it was so strange that it’s difficult to include it in any reasonable analysis. Kettering, on the other hand, have the best away record in the league, and on this basis it wasn’t unreasonable to think that a draw was a possible, even likely, outcome.

There was comment that we needed Constable, Murray and Potter back. Well, those three haven’t played together for two months. To lose players like them is going to have an impact, you can’t just replace them like for like.

Some people have thrown in the towel even though there’s we’re one point short with a quarter of the season still to play. And the only team that are close to us, Stevenage, are demonstrating form no team in any league would live with.

And, even if the title is beyond us, there’s a route to the Football League via the play-offs – surely it’s by any means possible.

Fans are rarely objective enough to be self critical, but if we’re to throw our toys out of the pram every time things start to turn against us, then we’re deserving of everything we get. If we can’t win the title by 15 points, well, we don’t want to play anymore. We can’t claim to be loyal Oxford fans simply because we’re prepared to turn up to games when it’s a bit chilly.