Ipswich Town 2 Bristol Rovers 0

August 11, 2023August 13, 2023 / martinpbrooks / Leave a comment

When the draw for what used to be called the League Cup was made, I was quite pleased to find that Ipswich had drawn Bristol Rovers; this was because Bristol Rovers were the only one of Town’s third division opponents I didn’t see last season. I’m not sure why that mattered, it’s not as if I keep notes on each team, although in an odd way, through this blog, I suppose I do. Oh dear.

Despite my earlier happiness at the draw, it has taken me until the night before the game to get round to buying a ticket because despite the grotty weather, in my head it’s still summer, and summer is for dreaming and for World Cups, oh, and occasionally for European Conference League qualifying games. Football is mostly something for autumn, winter and spring. As usual for League Cup matches, because all the seats cost a tenner I choose not to sit in my season ticket seat, but to explore one of the twenty-nine and half thousand odd other viewpoints. Usually, I head for the best view and the padded seats of Block Y, and there are still single seats available, but craving company I texted my friend Gary to see if he is going; he is, and gives me his seat number which he tells me is close to where he usually sits in what used to be called the West Stand. I buy the seat next to Gary which turns out to be uncomfortably close to the corner of the ground; but it’s okay as I had warned Gary that I would blame him if the seat wasn’t very good, and now I can. To think, I could have been in Block Y. I also texted my friend Mick to see if he is going to the game, but he tells me that he has “no interest in the League (Carabao) Cup”, which I thought was a bit haughty of him.

Having parked up my planet-saving Citroen e-C4 in a street between Norwich Road and Anglesea Road, it’s a short walk to the Arb on High Street where I obtain a pint of Mauldon’s Suffolk Pride (£3.60 with Camra 10% discount). The bar is not very busy, and I tell the barman that I had expected it to be busier, but he tells me most people are in the beer garden. He’s correct, most people are, but there are still free tables and I can only see one bloke in an Ipswich Town shirt. I settle down to drink my unexpectedly cloudy pint, and read Issue 26 of the Turnstile Blue fanzine, a small pile of which were in the corridor between the bar and the gents. I read an article which, in the context of the ‘fuss’ surrounding the death of the old queen, attempts to debunk the apparently mythical status afforded to former Town chairmen John and Patrick Cobbold. The basis of the argument seems to be that they were incredibly wealthy and posh, and ‘Mr John’ drank and swore a lot. I don’t read much more because the penetrating voice of a man possibly in his late twenties, who is with the bloke in an Ipswich shirt, and the mild but loud Ipswich accent of a woman probably in her forties are preventing me from concentrating. After half an hour of slow supping and covering my ears, I leave for Portman Road.

Arriving in Sir Alf Ramsey Way shortly after seven-thirty, I buy a programme (£2.00) in the modern cashless manner and am then surprised to see long queues at the turnstiles. Tonight, in the spirit of saving the planet by not using unnecessary pieces of paper, my ticket is on my mobile phone and my inner Luddite wonders if technology is the reason for the slow progress into the stadium. Moments before reaching the turnstile, my finger slips on my phone screen and I accidentally delete the e-mail that includes my ticket, but fortunately I know I can still find it if I look through all my e-mails and that’s what I do. Happily, the QR code on my e-mail also works and I pass through the turnstile just in time to drain off some Suffolk Pride and make it to my seat before the names of the Ipswich team have all been announced. I try to call out the surnames of Town players in the manner of a French football crowd, but the ‘new’ stadium announcer Mark Murphy says Dom Ball instead of Dominic Ball and ruins things completely.

The match kicks off at fourteen minutes to eight according to the digital clock on the scoreboard. Town get first go with ball, kicking it mostly towards Sir Alf Ramsey’s stand, and are wearing the traditional blue and white kit, which this season has broad white stripes down the sleeves that from some angles make the whole sleeve look white. Kits have to be imbued with meaning nowadays and we are told that the design is inspired by the kit worn by the promotion winning team of 2000. When the sleeves look all white, I am reminded of our Premier League winning side of 1962. Bristol Rovers for their part wear black shorts and white socks to cover their loins, buttocks and calves and grey shirts over their torsos. I do not know if the Rovers shirts are imbued with meaning or not, but I like to think they are inspired by a foggy day in the Bristol Channel or specks of ghostly coal dust blown across from the South Wales pits or Cardiff docks. Gary and I speculate as to whether we have already seen this season’s dullest kit worn by an away team at Portman Road and recall how Manchester United once wore a grey and black kit at Southampton and changed at half-time when already three or four goals down, supposedly because the players couldn’t see each other against the background of the crowd. It seems probable from the half-time score that they couldn’t see the Southampton players either.

Town dominate possession and after just twelve minutes take the lead. A passing move down the right ends with Jack Taylor passing a ball from Kayden Jackson into the Bristol goal net. That was easy. I haven’t really tuned myself into the game yet however, and rather than leaping up and punching the air in a display of forgotten youthful exuberance like I would normally, I just slowly raise my bottom off my seat and applaud politely in a semi-stooped position. Gary’s reaction is similarly sluggish. For these supporters it still feels like pre-season, the overture, or to employ a war-themed comparison popular with football pundits, like 1939, the phoney war. Elsewhere in the stadium people are more attuned to the programme as they beat drums and chant “Blue and White Army.”

Town continue to dominate possession and occasionally come close to scoring a goal, but not close enough. I haven’t seen Gary since July 1^st, so we talk as much as we concentrate on the game. Gary asks me what is the worst football ground I’ve ever been to. I tell him I think it was Oxford United’s Manor Ground. He asks what the best ground was. I tell him possibly The Velodrome in Marseille, although the Allianz Riviera in Nice is pretty good when full. Having been unexpectedly put on the spot I forget to mention the Stade Felix Boleart in Lens and the Stade Geoffrey Guichard in St Etienne.

Bristol Rovers only occasionally approach the Town goal and their first shot just creeps and bobs and bounces its way across the turf into the arms of the Town goalkeeper, the interestingly monikered Cieran Slicker. It takes a good twenty minutes or more for Rovers to have another shot and this time Grant Ward’s much more powerful shot is parried away by Slicker for what amounts to a pretty good save. It’s a moment which results in my hearing the faint call of “Come On Rovers” carried over the pitch on the warm evening air from the one hundred and twenty-three Bristolians in the far corner of the stadium. Otherwise, the first half of the game leaves no lasting impression on me and after a minute of time added on it’s time for Gary to nip to use the facilities whilst I stand up and try to manipulate my neck, which has grown achy and stiff from having my head turned towards the Sir Alf Ramsey stand for most of the previous forty-six minutes.

Once Gary has returned, the ‘new’ stadium announcer Mark Murphy appears on the pitch wearing what looks like the same suit that replaced announcer Stephen Foster used to wear. Murphy tells us he is going to talk to a Town legend and with the artificially excited intonation and words-all-rolled-into-one pronunciation of a former local radio DJ, he announces “Johnny Warks here” and Gary and I look at each other wondering who the hell Johnny Warksear is. Johnny Wark appears on the big screen and all that’s missing are the subtitles when he speaks.

The game resumes at ten minutes to nine and my hopes of spending the second half just looking straight ahead take a dive as Bristol start quite well. “Wo-o-o-oh, That’s the way we like it” or something like that sing the Sir Bobby Robson Stand to the tune of what seems to be an original composition or a song I don’t know. Rovers are gifted a corner as Lee Evans passes the ball back to a place where Cieran Slicker isn’t standing. But then Ipswich win a couple of corners of their own to redress the balance, before on-loan Omari Hutchinson is the first player to be booked after not so much a bad tackle as an inept one. “Ole, Ole, Ole” sing the Sir Bobby Robson stand and the drums up in the corner of the stand by the club shop beat; inside the shop stuff must be bouncing off the shelves. In the seat in front of me a bloke with not much hair has a pair of sunglasses perched on top of his head. There’s a holiday feel to the crowd tonight with adults and children wearing T-shirts and shorts, looking as if they’ve been at the beach all day. I half expect to see someome eating candy floss or wearing a ‘kiss me quick’ hat. On the pitch, the second half is reflecting the cheery mood with carefree attacking football and as result Cieran Slicker makes a spectacular save with his feet.

Substitutions arrive on sixty-six minutes with Cameron Humphryes and Sone Aluko taking a bow. Shots rain in on the Bristol goal and a corner is won. “Oooh Sone Aluko” sing the Sir Bobby Robson Stand to the tune of the White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army. Marcus Harness half-volleys the ball from close range, but too weakly to bother the Rovers’ goalkeeper. As more substitutes warm up on the touchline in front of us I say the name of George Hirst to Gary. “I know what you’re going to say” says Gary “He has a haircut that looks like his mum cut it using a pudding bowl”. Gary knows me too well and is almost exactly right, but I’d say she used a side plate or small frying pan giving his hair the appearance of a little hat or beret. I struggle so much to accept George’s haircut that if it had been up to me I wouldn’t have signed him, so it’s probably as well that it wasn’t.

In the seventy-third minute George and Conor Chaplin and Harry Clarke get to make the transition from bench to pitch, but the only immediate result is that Javani Brown shoots wide of the Town goal for Bristol. Within a minute of that however, a sweet passing move down the left sees the ball relayed across the penalty area for Sone Aluko, who seems to be existing in his own isolated moment of time and space, which allows him to then pass the ball into the far corner of the Bristol goal, and Town lead 2-0. Gary tells me how his mother recently received a new copy of the local telephone directory and that there were three people in it with his surname; they were Gary, his mother and his uncle who died several years ago, but it wouldn’t surprise me if BT was a hotbed of spiritualists.

All that remains is for Murphy to announce the crowd as being 15,047 with 123 of that number being from Bristol, and for people to applaud themselves, each other, and more acceptably the travelling Bristolians. Bristol is a long way from Ipswich on a Wednesday night, although logically no further than at any other time of day or week. Five minutes of time are added on to ensure we get our money’s worth and when that expires we rise as one to applaud and then seep out into the night. It’s been a decent little game, a bit low key like a pre-season match, but it’s good to see a match where none of the players appear to think winning matters more than life itself. Bristol Rovers played their part and should have scored at least once, but on the plus side they will now have time on their hands in the middle of the week to think about what their away kit should look like next season. As for Ipswich, we are on our way to Wembley, my stepson and his family live in the RG24 postcode area so if I get the urge I might march on to Basingstoke, or Reading.

Oxford United 2 Ipswich Town 1

January 22, 2023January 23, 2023 / martinpbrooks / Leave a comment

Oxford United is another football club for which I might claim some affinity due to genealogy. My father’s father was from the Oxfordshire village of Cuxham, with a family history there going back into the 1700’s, whilst my wife’s mother was from Iffley, which is now a suburb of Oxford. Added to that, my mother had a book of poems by Pam Ayres and rather liked Sir John Betjeman (a failed Magdalen College student) and Ernie the milkman too, but I never heard my grandfather speak of Oxford United, and I think he might have had a brother who played for their local rivals Reading. Personally, I hate the bastards. That is an attempt at a joke of course, but from the demented outlook of a football fan I do have cause not to like Oxford United much. Ipswich Town have never won a league game in Oxford and the old Manor Ground in Headington, the scene of much Town disappointment for Town followers in the mid to late 1980’s and into the 1990’s, was an absolute dump, guaranteed to give you pneumonia from standing in the open in the rain, or cholera if you used the toilets, even though Town did get promoted there in 1992. Adding an extra layer of resentment is the fact that my only previous attempt to attend a match at the Kassam Stadium, when spending a weekend in Oxford back near the turn of the century, a time I no longer really remember, ended with the game being called off due to a heavy frost.

With my mind a tortured maelstrom of contradictions and stuff I set out for Oxford, not in my trusty Citroen C3 but in my new electric Citroen E-C4 as I simultaneously attempt to right the wrongs of football watching history and save the planet from carbon monoxide poisoning at the same time. The car won’t make a round trip of 240 miles without re-charging the batteries so I have been worrying and losing sleep all week imagining that I will not be able to re-charge the car and get home. My research into the Zap-Map App and the comments of electric car users, intended to allay my fears through comprehensive preparation have only added to my insecurity. I needn’t have worried of course, because having made the obvious choice to make a pre-match visit to the Redbridge Park and Ride super hub thing, I now am easily restoring the magical power of electric traction to my hopefully trusty but definitely clean air promoting Citroen EC4. I find a small community of electric car users there who are willing to help and discuss best electric car-practice, although I can’t say much of the clique of Tesla users who have their own bank of charging points away from the hoi-polloi as if Elon Musk, the weirdly monikered owner of Tesla is trying to create his own fan base or private army over whom he has dominion.

With enough miles in the Citroen’s battery to ensure my return home after the match, I head for the Kassam Stadium just a few kilometres along the southern ring road. It’s been a pleasant drive to Oxford on free-flowing motorways under pale blue skies and winter sun. That was until I crossed the border from Buckinghamshire. Descending the awesome Aston Hill chalk cutting through the Chilterns ( aka the Stokenchurch Gap) Oxfordshire is usually spread out below, but today it has been replaced by a murky, blurry smudge as if Mark Rothko had painted a life size landscape. To the side of the road, twenty or more large birds circle, they might by Kites but to my worried imagination they look like vultures; I’ve entered a scene from a fantasy novel in which the hero journeys into the cold and eerie kingdom of his evil nemesis, and to save battery power I haven’t even got the car radio on to keep me company.

An hour and a half later I have rocked up at the free-parking at the Kassam Stadium, where despite the car park being full, and it’s only half-past one, the little fella on the gate let’s me in and says if I can find a space I can stay. After another steward directs me to some disabled parking spaces and I have to explain that I’m not disabled (not in any way that counts anyway) I follow the lead of another searcher and bump up onto a verge, which is very handily placed near the entrance for a quick getaway at the end of the game. I switch off the car and eat the lunch that I brought with me, two poached salmon and water cress sandwiches on soft malted brown bread and two handcrafted classic pork sausage rolls. I consume a chapter of my current read, a book entitled “Raw Concrete, the beauty of Brutalism”. Outside of my Citroen it is foggy and grey and cold, and the home end of the Kassam stadium looms out of the misty gloom. Just before two o’clock, I venture out to explore what lies beyond the sea of parked cars all around me. I talk briefly to a man on a motorbike, who complains that people on foot won’t get out of his way. I tell him I didn’t hear him, and it’ll be even worse when he has an electric bike; he doesn’t believe that will ever happen. Although an Oxford supporter, the biker seems to think Ipswich will win by a couple of goals because they have some good players. We part agreeing that we are both out to enjoy the afternoon whatever the result.

Outside the main stand I buy a programme (£4.00) from a woman stood behind a table. I had thought she said it was only £1, and as I tender a single small coin I tell her “That’s cheap”. “Oh go on with you” she says as if I’m mucking about, and my brain quickly reconsiders what I’d heard and tells me to hand over two larger coins and take the small one back, which in fact makes the programme rather expensive. I wander on through more parked cars, past the statue of a bull with an impressive scrotum towards the club shop which is behind a cinema. The club shop is a wonderful experience and I particularly enjoy the mugs celebrating the fact that Oxford lost three-nil at home to Arsenal in the third round of the FA Cup; also for sale is a large mounted photo of the stadium that night, as if Oxford supporters need something to put up on their walls to prove that the stadium was very nearly full once. There are also gnomes.

It’s one of those days when it seems I can’t help but catch people’s eye, and they nod as if they know me. A policeman did it a minute ago and now a steward does it as I step up to turnstile three of the main stand. Approaching the turnstile, I don’t know why but I half expect it to be automatic, and I’m slightly taken aback to see the face and hand of a woman appear at a small window from which she scans my ticket. Inside the stand, the walls are a mellow shade of breeze block, I buy a coffee (£2.20) and the young woman who serves me hopes that I enjoy it, which is good of her considering it’s just a paper cup of Kenco instant granules and hot water. A man is selling programmes from behind a wall, and as if by way of advertisement he is reading a copy, pausing occasionally to call out “Programmes” in the manner of someone with Tourette’s syndrome, or like an evening paper seller. There are the names of successful Oxford teams of the past printed on boards attached to the walls. I find myself feeling slightly jealous of the names Cyril Toulouse and Les Blizzard.

Clutching my coffee to warm my hands, I find my seat, which is in the back row of the bottom tier of the stand, seat number 78, I chose it because that was the year Town won the Cup. Behind me is a wall of beautifully smooth polished concrete on the other side of which are Oxford’s ‘executive’ boxes. An old boy on the back row stands to attention to let me past him as I ascend the steps, but I point to the seat and tell him I’m sitting next to him today. As I stand by my tip-up seat and survey the ground the old boy fills me on our neighbours; the seats next to him and his friend are empty today because “they’ve got a do, this evening” , whilst the bloke who sits in seat the other side of me will turn up just before kick-off, and in front of me will be a bloke wearing a cap with horns on and annoyingly the horns will always be in my field of vision. The other seats about us are mostly filled with old blokes in woolly hats, the sort who I’m more used to seeing at non-league games. I feel comfortable here, probably because I’ll soon be an old bloke myself. An impressively loud chant suddenly booms through the fog from the Town supporters who are in the stand directly opposite me. It’ll be good if they can keep that up during the game and for more than the few seconds it lasted this time.

The man with the horns duly arrives as does my other neighbour, just as the old boy predicted, although he didn’t say he’d be eating a Twix, which he is. In time the teams appear, ushered onto the pitch between lines of flag waving children. Oxford United get first go with the ball and kick towards the end of the ground where there is no stand, just a scoreboard and fence with parked cars beyond. Reassuringly both teams are wearing their proper first choice kits, although hi-viz versions would be handy today. “Good player , him” says the old boy about Sam Morsy. “Good goalie, him” says the old boy about Christian Walton.

Only five minutes have elapsed and the Town fans opposite are unimaginatively already singing “Is this a library?” Has anyone ever walked into the Bodleian and chanted “Is this a football ground?” I wonder to myself. “You’re support is fucking shit”, continue the Town supporters, just like every other club’s fans do at Portman Road. The illuminated advertising boards suddenly announce “County Plumbing Supplies” and I am reminded of my wife’s niece’s husband, who is a plumber up the road from Oxford in Banbury. “Ethically sourced coconuts” reads the electric sign less prosaically moments later. So far, on the pitch, the football is all pretty humdrum, and Oxford are boldly not giving Town time to pass the ball about much, which from their perspective seems like a good tactic. “Oxford Fabrications Ltd” reads a plain old wooden advert hoarding down in front of me.

“Here we go” says the old bloke as Town move forward quickly in their first proper attack. The bloke the other side of me finished his Twix a while ago and opens a flask of coffee. At the end of the ground with a stand, Oxford supporters sing rounds of “We’re the left side” “We’re the right side” as Town fans used to back in the 1980’s; I had expected these Oxfordians to be more cutting edge, despite the soft lilt of their bucolic accents. The fog is swirling in an out and around the ground, hiding and revealing the occupants of the other two stands in turn.

Town earn their first corner after just ten minutes. “Come On You Blues” chant the Town fans with quite impressive volume. Sam Morsy commits a foul and concedes a free kick half-way into Town’s half of the pitch. “Yellows, Yellows” chant the home fans briefly. “We forgot, We forgot , We forgot that you were here” lie the Town fans unconvincingly. As a quarter of the game recedes into the forgettable past, the Town fans are desperate enough to sense the need for encouragement; “Come On Ipswich, Come On Ipswich” they chant, a couple of times, to remind themselves that they are here. A minute later Marcus Harness lashes the ball over the Oxford cross bar, it is a good chance wasted.

The fog has thickened, and the orange and black clad and totally bald referee Mr Robert Madden calls for a day-glo ball. I joke with the old boy beside me that it has a bell in it and lights up too; standard football match humour, but it made him laugh, although he must have heard it before at his age. “Football in a library, do-do-do” chant the Town fans before asking “Shall we sing, shall we sing, shall we sing a song for you?” Nobody responds, but the bloke with the horns gets up and heads downstairs, presumably to use the facilities. Town win a second corner. The bloke with horns returns and the bloke sat next to him leaves; Wes Burns trundles through the Oxford defence and strikes a firm shot against the Oxford cross bar. Like Harness before him he probably should have scored. A third of the game is gone forever, unless the match is abandoned, and as a broken down Oxford player receives AA assistance, everyone else gets a drink and remedial coaching on the touchline. Sam Morsy even changes his boots, perhaps for comfort, perhaps for fashion reasons, we will never know.

The game restarts and Conor Chaplin is soon flashing a header from a Marcus Harness cross straight into the arms of the goalkeeper. A minute later Oxford’s Yanic Wildschut stumbles goalwards through attempted tackles from Sam Morsy and Luke Woolfenden to find himself just six or seven yards from goal with a large space to aim at to Christian Walton’s left. It’s an opportunity he doesn’t hit over or against the cross bar preferring to roll it accurately behind the far post to give Oxford the lead. The old boy beside me is very happy indeed, if surprised. I stand up with those all around me, just to be polite really. Goals are sponsored by Tripp Hearing the electric advert boards tell us, who will also unblock your ears, presumably for a fee.

It takes just three minutes for Ipswich to equalise as Janoi Doncian breaks forward with no one to stop him and Marcus Harness crosses the ball to the far post where the unmarked Leif Davies is free to head the ball into the goal very easily indeed. I hadn’t expected Town to score so soon but am pleased they did. “You’re not singing any more” chant the Town fans, but I’m not sure anyone was.

The remaining eight minutes of the half drift off forgettably, Oxford win a free-kick from which a direct shot on goal is possible. “Yellows, Yellows” implores the scoreboard and two mournful chants of the two words emanate from the end that has a stand; the shot goes over the Town cross bar and after three minutes of additional time it’s half-time.

Half-time is still cold and foggy and I take a walk to the front of the stand to help move the blood in my veins. On the pitch a small collection of former players is gathered including Ron Atkinson famous for his awkward, room-silencing racist asides; I hadn’t realised he was still allowed out in public and just hope Marcel Desailly isn’t here too. I browse the programme, which I decide I like, despite costing four quid, because it doesn’t have many adverts and other than the cover is not printed on glossy paper. Less attractive is another hoarding in front of me advertising Mola TV which shows Belgian football on-line in the UK, but also the podgy, grinning face of Alan Brazil who, as great a player as he was for the Town does a fair impression of a complete arse on the radio.

At six minutes past four play resumes, with the break having typically made us all feel a little bit colder than we were when the first half ended. Town soon win a corner and chants of “Come On You Blues” can be heard through the fog. The bloke sat beside me with the Twix and the coffee drinks some more coffee and eats another bar of chocolate of unknown brand. A break down the right from Marcus Harness ends with a low cross and George Hirst driving a first time shot past an Oxford goalpost, it might go down as third opportunity missed.

Two thirds of the match is gone forever and Oxford win their first corner of the match, closely followed by the second. “ Come On You Yellows” seeps through the fog from the end with a stand. Marcus Harness and George Hirst are replaced by Nathan Broadhead and Freddie Ladapo and Oxford swap Wildschut and Mcguane for Joseph and Taylor. A little creepily Oxford manager Karl Robinson seems to like to cuddle and fondle his players as they enter and leave the field of play; I’ve always thought touching in the work place was strictly out of bounds.

Less than twenty to minutes to go and Oxford win a third corner, but the north stand has melted completely into the fog. Conor Chaplin heads past the post from a horizontal position with his feet closest to the goal. The game now stops as Mr Madden consults both captains and the managers, presumably about the deepening gloom and whether it is wise to carry on. Cross field passes and long balls are now even more hit and hope than usual. The old boy beside me seems sure the game is going to be abandoned; I think he’d like to get home in the warm. Some people in front of us do get up and leave. “Where are ya?, Where are ya?” chant the Town fans playfully. “What’s going on, what’s going on?” chants the end with the stand, sounding more anxious. The game resumes, but on the far side of the ground my view of the match is reduced to one of shadows and fog; if this was West Ham, Jack the Ripper might come on as substitute and we wouldn’t notice.

The game is into its last ten minutes of normal time and Oxford replace the improbably spelt Tyler Goodrham with Djavan Anderson. The ball is in the Ipswich penalty area and comes out the edge where Cameron Branagan chances a shot on the half-volley which ends up in the top corner of the Ipswich goal. It was to an extent a hit and hope a case of fortune favouring the brave, but Town are losing and on the basis of what has happened so far this afternoon defeat looms out of the fog. Town’s response is to quickly replace as many players as possible and all three remaining substitutions are made in a sort of hopeful ‘powerplay’ of ‘fresh legs’. Town win their second corner of the half, and then another and the ball strikes the cross bar for a second time, on this occasion from a Harry Clarke header. The pressure on the Oxford goal recedes. “No noise from the Tractor boys” chant the occupants of the end with a stand, and the game staggers on into seven minutes of added on time. But Town don’t look like scoring again and they don’t.

With the final whistle I exit sharply, taking care not to bowl over any of the old boys carefully descending the stairs. I am soon back at my car where the fog is freezing to my windscreen and with no queuing whatsoever am out onto Grenoble Road and then onto the B480 towards the motorway, the high road out of the fearful darkness that is Oxfordshire. It’s a great ending to an otherwise very disappointing afternoon, if I decide to care overly about the result, but as the old boys have no doubt learnt over time “You can’t win ’em all”, even when you’re expected to. Sometimes just being happy you can get home after a day out is enough.