St Albans City 1-3 Oxford City: A tale of two cities

Whilst I had been down to Clarence Park a couple of times already in pre-season, I hadn’t really had the chance to go and watch my local side in a proper match for a long time, with my quest for the 92 taking most of my free dates over the last couple of seasons. I still try and keep an eye out for their results, and when I saw over the weekend that they were due to play on Monday night I was astonished that I had missed it, but made a decision to go and finally catch another league game for the Saints.

St Albans have been playing Monday nights for a couple of years, after a decision was made to abandon Tuesdays when they could, so that they could attract more fans who would otherwise be watching Champions’ League on the TV. It does mean that the games now clash with Sky’s Monday Night Football, but after a weekend of going to a match and watching a few on the Sunday I tend not to bother with it anyway. It looks like it worked, as the crowd at this match would be announced as 481, which is about average for the club but a decent turnout for a midweek game.

As usual, it was an easy enough journey to Clarence Park, and my dad was joining me for the first time this season. Less than 15 minutes after leaving home we were at the York Road turnstiles, and at first just 25 minutes before kick-off it looked like we would be the only supporters there! We picked up a programme for £2.50 (a bit steep at this level, but one of the best programmes I’ve seen in non-league and it could certainly give some league sides a run for their money) and took our usual spot in the main terrace, which eventually filled up before the match started.

The visitors this time round were to be Oxford City, who were spending their first season in the National League South (as a side note, I still think the new league title sounds ridiculous, and there was nothing wrong with calling it the Conference anyway), after being re-assigned from the North last season due to the new teams joining the sixth tier. Along with Lowestoft and Gloucester, them playing in that division was always a bit of an anomaly, and I get the impression the club will be happy with the change, as in addition to the shorter trips the North is regarded as a stronger league, so they may well have more chance of promotion in this league.

Oxford City are perhaps most famous for a pre-season friendly in 1994 against West Ham United, who were at the time managed by Harry Redknapp. It’s become something of a legendary story nowadays, but after getting stick from a Hammers fan all game, Redknapp decided to put the supporter on the pitch for the Premiership side, and he allegedly scored a goal during his 20 minutes on the pitch. Clearly there would be no repeat of this tonight, although there was a vocal following from Oxfordshire, who amused themselves during the match by singing some old songs, including the Imperial March during the second half.

It was a better game than I was expecting, as both sides tried to get the ball on the ground and play it around. The home side had the best of the game in the opening ten minutes, knocking it about well and pushing forward despite their lack of width. However, Laurie Walker in Oxford’s goal was never really tested, and it wasn’t too long before the visitors managed to grow into the game and assert their dominance. I was most impressed by Julen Lafuente, who had some real talent when dropping back to the middle of the pitch, and looked like he had played at a higher level. I’m still not sure whether that gave him the rights to wear orange boots in the sixth division, however.

Just over 20 minutes into the game Oxford City went through Ander Del Alamo, although it took the Saints just a minute to respond and draw level through the impressive Louie Theophanous. He has to replace John Frendo who scored a vast number of goals during his 2-year spell with City, but at the minute he looks like he could be a better player, and has some great pace and composure to go with it. Before long, it was half-time and 1-1 seemed like a fair score at the interval.

However, the visiting side really did become the dominant team during the second half – whilst there was a lot of battle in the midfield throughout the match, it was only Oxford City who seemed able to burst away from that and threaten over the second spell. Whilst the Saints did have a couple of half chances, once Kynan Isaac scored the visitor’s second goal the game was never really in doubt. St Albans made a couple of slightly strange tactical changes, which didn’t really give them any benefit, and after a couple of delays (due to a bad challenge from an Oxford player and a later clash of heads) we were into 5 minutes of added time. During this, City should really have tried to push forward to win back a point (I’d have even told the goalkeeper to go up for attacks), but they seemed to remain under the cosh and right at the end Bradley Bubb finished off an Oxford City counter-attack to put some gloss on the scoreline.

3-1 seemed like a terrible home result, and many of the St Albans fans seemed really annoyed with the game, but given that the visitors looked like a very strong side I’m not sure it was as clear-cut as it sounds. Clearly the Saints need a few new signings and the team was calling out for width, but there’s still a good chance they could have a decent season.