Oxford Blues

THE man chuckled.
Well, he actually sniggered.
And it was as if he had stuck a dagger in my heart.

But let me retrace my steps.
It is Tuesday evening and the Gas are away at Oxford United in the Carling Cup.
This is Oxford United, newly promoted back into the Football League after years of exile in the Conference.
The club has been rebuilt. New stadium, new manager, new hope.
But they are only on the first rung back, while last season Bristol Rovers finished 11th in League One, football's third tier. Then, as mentioned earlier, we went out in the summer and acquired some new faces which our manager Paul Trollope described as "Championship" standard and said could only improve his squad.
Losing 3-0 to Peterborough on Saturday was probably on the cards as they had just been relegated and managed to hold onto their best players, while we were building a new team.
Oxford, though. Different story. We should have too much league experience and, dare I say it, class for them.
It is the Cup, though, and it throws up plenty of surprises. We should know. We have created quite a number ourselves in the past. In fact, I recall us once winning at Old Trafford in this same competition, under one of its many previous guises, more than three decades ago.

There was a time I would have gone to Oxford.
I recall it was my first-ever away trip with Rovers back in the 70s.
At the time they played at the Manor Ground and my abiding memory was getting off the train with hundreds of other fans and opting to walk rather than take a bus. About an hour later, having done a hillclimb of which Sir Edmund Hillary would have been proud, we arrived at this ramshackle slum of sardine can proportions wondering if our legs could hold us for another 90 minutes or so.
I remember standing, huddled, on their tiny away end - packed to the rafters - and cheering on my team as they went down 2-1. From that moment I was hooked on away travel, the cameraderie, banter and feeling that you're some kind of elite unit sent out to spread the name of your team across the country.

Mind you, even now to bellow "Rovers" at the top of my voice at their plush new stadium was tempting.
But I would have needed a damn good excuse and, quite honestly, I couldn't think of one.
You see, my daughter is just seven weeks old and tonight was bath night. Couldn't miss that for some strange crusade with a mediocre football team, could I? Well, not without creating a frosty atmosphere between myself and my lovely wife that might stretch through to the weekend.
I took the sensible option of staying home and saving up the brownie points for our assault on Wembley at the end of the season, or even an away date with a big club later in this same competition.
Anyway, bathtime over, the wife and I decided to watch one of our dvd's from Series 4 of the Wire. Great show, and I needed to take my mind off the goings-on in Oxfordshire. A strange part of me felt that, though I hoped we would win, there was a good chance that we would be on the end of an upset.

Half way through the programme and the Mrs fancies an ice cream. Having just bought a new freezer we haven't stocked it yet, so she volunteers to nip around the corner to the garage.
I pause the DVD. I know what I am going to do next.
I want to resist, but I have to check the latest score on Sky Soccer Special.
And just as I turn over the guy chuckles. No mistake, it's a quite distinct, corner of the mouth, expression of amusement.
And why is he amused? It's because: "It is now Oxford United FIVE, Bristol Rovers 1".
From that moment I can't concentrate on the Wire.
What has gone wrong?
When I said I had a nagging feeling the game might produce a shock I was thinking along the lines of 1-0. And I was thinking that score because, quite honestly, I just can't envisage our front men finding the net.
But 5-1 to Oxford? Home to posh students and Inspector Morse? I'm sure even his powers of detection couldn't work out how the hell we managed that.
Worst still, there are only 52 minutes gone.
And by the end of the night it is even worse. It is 6-1. We are out.

We are out of the Carling Cup, a competition Paul Trollope says he is taking "very seriously".
Seriously?
Then why has he managed to turn us into a one-night joke? A team to chuckle over on national TV? Why? Why? Why?
The Mrs has gone to bed. She can see by the look on my face that there won't be any lucid responses to any of her attempts at conversation.
My phone beeps. A text message.
I see the sender is a bloke I work with: A Chelsea fanatic.
It just says, "Rovers... Rovers".
Har de har har.
It won't be the last.
Because tonight, fellow Gasheads, we have been embarrassed.
Totally and utterly.
And while those players who supposedly represent us face up to a couple of hard days on the training pitch, it is nothing compared to the stressful week ahead we face from mates, work colleagues and the like who follow a different club to ours or, even worse, don't like football at all but have still heard about this monumental defeat.
And while manager Trollope gives us more platitudes in choreographed press conferences for the website which end up in the Evening Post word for word, we have to try to make sense of the whole mess.
I dare one of those players who wore the quarters tonight to say they can understand how the fans are feeling.
They can't.
They have no idea.
For while they have proved to be gutless, we are simply gutted.