Yellows 2 Lincoln City 1

Republicans think Monarchists are unthinking blue rinsed morons incapable of analysis. But to dismiss a royal wedding is to fundamentally misunderstand how this country works.

Think of the monarchy as an organisation constrained by a complex web of evolving anachronistic protocols. The family itself has little influence, in fact no one person can hope to understand it, let alone change it.

In its trust are the country’s most valuable assets including its armed forces and its independent media. The establishment own them, government run them, we fund them. These assets can’t be used unless all three parties agree. It’s not perfect, but the split responsibilities offer unparalleled stability.

A royal wedding is an advert for this key cornerstone of society. If it didn’t come alive it would whither away and the armed forces, media and other key institutions would be under the full control of ideological governments and market forces. Couldn’t happen? Look at Italy. The lesson? Don’t judge Royal Wedding by a Royal Wedding.

It is very easy to over react to a single, isolated event. Certainly anyone following Oxford since the turn of the millennium will be well schooled in over reaction. The Wilder Years have changed that, and Saturday was evidence of the more considered and mature analysis of our position that has taken over the club.

Gone are the histrionics of the past. We have learnt not to judge a bad run when the general direction of travel is good. We’ve learnt, as with Saturday’s win over Lincoln; that a scratchy and soporific first half is no reason to expect a poor second half. Eventually The Imps ran out of ideas, puff, and not a little nervous energy, we were able to exploit their failings with a clinical and comfortable second half execution.

We’ve improved, of that there is no doubt, we’ve play attractive positive football all season and whilst on occasions we’ve taken a bath for our openness, if we continue to improve at the same rate, we should be expecting a play-off place, maybe more, next season. In fact, the only lesson that still needs to be learnt is that possession is not something to get frustrated about and a backward pass is not necessarily negative. If we learn that next season, we could end up taking the league by storm. In the meantime we should be very satisfied with a job well done this year.