Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Torquay 3 Yellows 4

When Sean Clohessy miscued his cross 40 yards over Ryan Clarke’s head, Southend’s fans were tumbling down the terraces with giddy joy. Clohessy himself did a silly dance with his hand over his mouth in mock embarrassment. We sat, ashen faced, in frustrated bewilderment.

I thought; why do we never have fun? Don’t get me wrong, we’ve had good times, but our fun is more like the relief of emptying your underpants of biscuit crumbs than naive childish enjoyment. I don’t remember us ever having scored an audacious fluke of a goal like that, or being at the right end of a 4-3 away ding-dong goal-fest.

Fun is just not the Oxford way of doing things.

And then this… Chris Wilder wields the axe by making eight changes, he brings in Jack Midson days after suggesting his time was up as an Oxford player. We win by the odd goal in seven with Midson grabbing his hat-trick in the last minute.

I know you know all that. I just needed to replay it all in my head. It’s just not. The Oxford. Way.

There will be some claiming that Midson has proved Chris Wilder wrong or that he got lucky with his team selection. But as they say; the better you are the luckier you get. He makes decisions; sometimes they’re wrong, sometimes they’re wild and illogical. But mostly they’re right. And we get to see a man standing on the ball doing a Kanchelskis. IN AN AWAY GAME. Oxford? Fun? Feels odd, don’t it?

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