Oxford United 1 Cardiff City 3 (aet)

With the country apparently teetering on the edge of chaos, and following a couple of nights of rumour and counter-rumour surrounding the imminent arrival of The Mob in the provinces, coupled with the fact that the notorious riot monkeys of Cardiff were in town, I had assumed an exhausted Thames Valley Police, drafted into the capital to get rioters to chill the fuck out, would have forced the postponement of Wednesday’s Rumbleows Cup game.

In my head it wasn't going ahead, so I wasn’t mentally prepared. I half expected to see the Holiday Inn Express in flames and rabid hooded apes swinging from the streetlights ready to rip my face off. I fleetingly considered what I'd do if caught up in a riot, because, as a liberal minded Guardian reading softy, rioting is not really my thing. My sense of perspective spent, it’s fair to say that my energy levels were on a downward trend come 7pm.

I parked on the Grenoble Road, snuggling in between the articulated lorries; their drivers hunkered down for a night of furious wanking to German pornography. There was a familiar sense that an imminent non-event was about to occur. Something the Kassam Stadium specialises in.

There was an easy-going, summer pub garden atmosphere around the ground typical of this part of the season. People are freshly laundered and slightly tanned. Some new faces appear, young women in particular, encouraged by the weather and a sense of not having much else on. They won't be here come November, but I'm happy they are now.

The pitches are good, the players’ fresh, and the pressure not as intense. As an aesthetic, the football is generally better, even if the lack of a competitive context doesn’t quite have you on the edge of your seat. There wasn’t much evidence of the apocalypse. Even the Cardiff fans seemed unwilling to antagonise and cause trouble now that social disorder is a mainstream pastime.

The game bounced along at an easy pace, we had an extended patch in which we could have won it, and they seemed to come into it as their fitness began to tell. There were a couple of goals. I thought of the Japanese tourists queuing in front of me for tickets before the game. They reminded me of a mid-summer trip I took to Fenway Park to watch the baseball 10 years ago. I indulged in the spectacle; eating hotdogs and clapping in appropriate places. More theatre than sport. I hope they enjoyed it, as I did then, ticking 'see English football' off their to-do list. Perhaps they bought some merchandise to take home with them, a yellow shirt - an icon of the overweight working man in its homeland becoming a thing of exotic chic on the streets Toyohashi or wherever.

Eventually as time drifted on the interest in getting home to bed began to exceed seeing out the result. People headed for the exits with the game in midflow and the outcome not yet certain. When Jake Wright ducked a long clearance and Cardiff made it three, he was applauded for empathising with the apathy rather than pillared for the mistake.

And so, a pleasant but underwhelming experience. Given the nonsensical nature of this week’s events around the country, perhaps that’s just what we needed.

West Ham United 1 Yellows 0

I’ve found that I’ve settled into a routine when it comes to watching football at the weekend. Match of the Day with all its Premiership hubris is good Saturday night viewing. The Football League Show is best kept for Sundays.

The Premiership is the equivalent of watching a Hollywood blockbuster. Its all big explosions and grand stunts based on a contrived two-dimensional storyline. It’s the weekend escape from the trudge of the working week, enjoyable escapism that offers little beyond basic entertainment.

Conversely, the Football League is a warming award winning documentary you stumble across on BBC4. With a week of work ahead, it reminds you that life has meaning and purpose allowing you to head for bed with a renewed energy for life.

Worlds apart then, and yet, we arrive at Upton Park and there’s something very familiar about it. It’s the vultures circling in the sky. They were at the Kassam the day we went down, packing the press box looking for a good, solid story of human grief.

There is much hand-wringing around the Boleyn Ground too. The media have decided West Ham are this year’s club in crisis. Uncle Avram Grant skulks around like a character from a film who everyone thinks eats children but turns out to be a kindly misunderstood old man looking for his long lost granddaughter. There is misery and the whiff of failure all around.

Of course, in reality, they don’t know they’re born. We’re playing without fear, they were weighed down with it. We walk away with our heads held high, they walk away in shame. So, whilst they go into the next round of the cup, our stock is still soaring. Better a losing Oxford fan than a winning West Ham fan, which says it all really.

West Ham preview

Round the corner from where my sister lived was a large but unremarkable Edwardian house. Unremarkable except for the bars on the windows, the black Land Rover Discovery, the monographed electric gates and the wrought iron fence with gold leaf. If it didn’t have gargoyles, they were probably on order.

Apparently the family entombed inside were related to the Krays and are under constant police and/or gangland protection. The house, nestling amongst an anonymous North London suburb, screams “LOOK AT ME, I AM RICH, RESPECT ME”.

It’s brash and ostentatious, tasteless and crass; it aims to impress through intimidation but serves only to make you snort through your nose at its ridiculousness; like the daft castle turrets that stand outside Upton Park.

This is what I like about W‘stam. In a world of foreign billionaire owners, global brand builders and supposed cosmopolitan sophisticates, they will always be the crass Englander.

The stadium is a classic English standard, whatever you say about the individuals they’ve produced in the last 15 years, they’re amongst the finest English footballers of their generation. They’re even owned by a couple of sleazy pornographers. I find myself warming to them all the time.

The start of the season has had a comforting and familiar timbre about it. The league has started with a gently positive air of expectation about it, a relief from the ulcer inducing gut wrenching desperation of recent seasons. The reward of the ‘ammers in the Rumbelows Cup 2nd Round is one of those early season treats that give you a satisfied glow of being back in your rightful homeland away from the ruffians and blaggers of the Conference. Like standing on a bus, looking down the blouse of a pretty commuter, a gentle thrill that you know isn’t going anywhere, but gives you a brief distraction from the greyness around you*.

We’ll enjoy it, whatever happens.

* not that I'd know, I've never commuted on a bus.

Yellows 6 Bristol Rovers 1

We’ve seen some bad sides in the last four years; Chester’s wheezing death throes, Wrexham neutered by their recent history, Tamworth running around like five-year- olds chasing a tennis ball in the playground.

None were quite as awful and shambolic as Bristol Rovers were last night. At least the others had good reason to be bad. Rovers seemed comfortable on the ball, athletic and strong, but they fell apart every time they tried to produce something. Like they couldn’t get their legs to do what their brains were asking. A kind of football Alzheimer’s.

I became preoccupied with it; I even gave an involuntary groan when Green latched onto one of Heslop’s through-balls. My new compadres in the SSU must have thought I was a Bristolian. I guess I’m just programmed to be sensitive to failure.

It made the game curious to watch. Everything we did worked; we were rampant, it could genuinely have been 8 or 9. Can we really have been that good? Trips to the Kassam are all about bulging veins and chest beating, the enjoyment of watching Oxford has come from the release from the agony of the game as it has about the thrill of victory. We’re not used to enjoying an exhibition in passing moving and finishing.

Last time we scored six was against Eastbourne and that included two penalty saves from Billy Turley. Before that, against Halifax, in 2001, we still struggled despite them being bottom of the league destined for the Conference. It was only when they were reduced to nine men that we took over. Before that? 6-0 against Shrewsbury… and then every goal was a header. Scoring six isn’t exactly conventional, but with us it’s been more that 25 years since we had a six-goal haul that was just, um, normal.

The evening reminded me of watching the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park one cool August evening 8 years ago. A thoroughly enjoyable evening out in warm friendly surroundings, but I’m buggered if I could work out what was going on.