13/09/07 - Put it down to experience

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the trust.

All in all this has not been a great week for me. I've had some sort of weird illness that made me sleep for 12 hours a night, this was followed by a wisdom tooth infection and then Grays away. To be quite honest, I'm not sure I can decide which of these was the low point of the week!

As this is a football website, I shall ignore my various health issues and concentrate on Grays. The highlight of this trip, other than eating a packet of Salt & Vinegar Space Raiders which were 2 months out of date, was that my flag finally popped its cherry just in time for the beginning of the Ultimate Yellows era. Unfortunately, the luck I was hoping it would bring did not materalise but I can not really complain too heavily as I managed to get out of both The Queen and The Pullman public houses alive which I think probably used up my luck reserves for the next couple of months or so.

The game itself was a fairly drab affair which seems to be becoming the norm for Oxford games lately. There is no denying that the effort is there but we just seem to really struggle with creating decent chances. In fact, all of our chances came from set piece headers; one of which hit the bar, the others clearing same by a couple of inches. Once again, Turley was called into much tougher action than the opposition keeper although both of them nearly conceded goals in comical fashion right in front of the traveling Yellows.

The main thing to learn from this is that we can not go on drawing game after game (although obviously it's preferable to losing!). Too many seasons have petered out because of our unerring ability to not finish teams off. Unfortunately this has been a problem at the club for some years now and must be addressed and resolved quickly.

Off the pitch, the Ultimate Yellows start their world-conquest bid at this Saturday's game. I shall be in there with them although I'm a bit concerned that numbers could be a bit short ('dozens' as opposed to 'hundreds' was the last count I heard) but this seems like one of those ideas that gains momentum once it has actually started. I'm sure that there are a large number of fans who are waiting to see how Saturday pans out before going the whole hog and getting involved in the throng! Only time will tell but no matter what happens, this Saturday's atmosphere should be cracking but if anyone brings a drum they might be wearing it by the end………..

COME ON YOU YELLOWS!