VENUE #51 OXFORD UNITED The Kassam Stadium

 SKY BET LEAGUE TWO

Oxford United... 3
Dagenham & Redbridge... 3

Saturday 30th August 2014

@ The Kassam Stadium
            Oxford


     After the events that took place on my last journey by train my Wife asked if she could join me on this venture to Oxford.  My confidence had taken a battering and I was not really up to facing another long period alone on a train and so was glad of her company.  It was a great excuse for her to go shopping and spend lots of cash in an unfamiliar environment, she is also a big fan of the TV programme Lewis and so it gave her a great opportunity to explore some of the places where the series was filmed while I do, what I do at my new venue.
     My game today from the Sky Bet league two takes me to the Kassam Stadium which is five miles from Oxford railway station and so I decided to take a taxi there and back which was a big mistake as it nearly cost me as much as the whole train journey..

Back of the Oxford Mail stand

     Oxford who are currently bottom of league two without a point in their first four matches take on a Dagenham & Redbridge side who are mid-table with six points.  Michael Appleton the U's head coach made three changes to the side that drew 1-1 after extra time only to lose 7-6 on penalties in the capital one cup at the Hawthorns on Tuesday night, Max Crocombe, Danny Rose and Junior Brown make way for George Long, Alex Jakubiak and Alfie Potter.  Wayne Burnett names an unchanged side to the one that beat Mansfield 2-0 at the London borough of Barking and Dagenham Stadium last Saturday.
     The game got off to a lively start with Oxford taking the lead after only three minutes with Alex Jakubiak sliding in to meet Joe Riley's right wing cross .
     After seven minutes it was 1-1 when Jamie Cureton's squared pass found Ashley Hemmings who side footed the ball past Long in the Oxford goal.
     That's how it stayed till half time but it was only the first minute after the break when Dagenham took the lead, Jamie Cureton firing home a Luke Howells pass from 14 yards.
     But this topsy- turvy affair hadn't finished yet for in the 55th minute Tom Newey's cross to the far side of the goal was met by the head of Danny Hylton who steered the ball back across O'Brien in goal for Dagenham and into the net, 2-2.
     Six minutes later and the lead returned to Oxford, Scott Doe brought down Jakubiak in the box and up stepped the home side's man of the match Hylton to strike the spot kick home for his second and the U's third of the afternoon.

View from the car park of the three stands

     You just knew that Dagenham weren't finished yet as for them to go away with nothing out of this game would have been a might unfair and it only took ten minutes for them to level the game once more, after some intense pressure from the Daggers the ball dropped kindly for Abu Ogogo just outside the Oxford 18 yard area and he fired a half volley over the top of George Long, (who was a "long" way off his line), and under the bar to give his team a well earned point.
     The Kassam Stadium is a 12,500 all seated Stadium that was built in 2001 to re-house United after they had to leave their previous home, the Manor ground, which had been their home tie venue for 76 years.
 

Picture from where I was sitting of the open car park end

 It's a wired looking place with three wonderfully sized stands on three sides of the pitch and a wooden fence behind the goal on the West side of the ground that leads directly onto the car park.  There is talk of completing the structure with a fourth stand but needs Oxford to be doing better than the league two status that they currently hold..
     I sat in the South stand to watch the game, it is a two tiered stand fully covered with a row of executive boxes and is rather impressive to look at, although seeing that it's only 13 years old you would have to say that it looks a lot older for it hasn't warn very well, the toilets are an absolute disgrace.

The North stand

     The North stand is single tiered and also fully covered and is where the away supporters watch the games from.  The Dagenham fans were down in the far corner of the stand right by the open car park end, mind, there were only 158 of them.
     At the other end to the car park is the Oxford Mail stand which is single tiered, fully covered and where the noisy, chanting home supporters congregate, they seem to have a competition between themselves to see who can out-sing the other, the right side or the left.
     I hope that after my last experience on the train to Milton Keynes that this sort of day is the norm, both me and my Wife had a lovely time and I'm looking forward to the next venue with renewed passion.

                                                         Match Details

     
         

VENUE #50 MILTON KEYNES DONS The Stadium MK

 SKY BET LEAGUE ONE

Milton Keynes Dons... 4
Gillingham... 2

Saturday 9th August 2014

@ The Stadium MK
      Milton Keynes


     First day of a new season and I'm all pumped up and ready to go for another ten months trekking around the football grounds of the UK.  It's a reasonably short trip down to Milton Keynes the team that took the place of Wimbledon in the football league moving from the tennis capital of Britain 62 miles North to the London overspill town in Buckinghamshire.
     Travelling as I do by train and on the second stage of my journey from Birmingham New street to Rugby, I find my seat and took off my coat as it's a bit on the warm side and place it in the luggage rack above my head and sit down to read the paper.  The train begins to move out of Birmingham and I think to myself, "Oh now we're moving I can go and visit the little boys room", and so i did, forgetting about my coat and , of cause, on my return to my seat I find that my coat had been taken.  I asked people in the carriage if they had seen anything to which the answer was, "no", so in a panic I start to race around trying to find it and it didn't take me long for it was on the floor between my carriage and the next with a drunken youth standing over it.  I questioned the youth about the coat and he said that it was lying there when he came past.  I promptly checked the coat to see if there was anything missing and found that my mobile phone had gone along with a couple of pounds in change.  I asked the youth for my phone back and he said that he hadn't got it and that I could search him and started to turn out his pockets.  Then his drunken girlfriend arrived on the seen and after more confrontation from me she started emptying her pockets and bag but of course they didn't reveal my mobile phone.  I had no proof that these people had anything to do with the crime and so I returned to my seat and reported it to the transport police at Milton Keynes.
     As you can imagine I didn't really fancy carrying on with my journey but was persuaded to by the Virgin train staff.  the train had CCTV cameras and they were confident that the culprit would be caught.
     Like I mentioned at the beginning that this was the first game of a new season and therefore nothing to compare with from previous weeks and so I'll just go straight into the match report.

Picture of outside view of the Stadium MK

     Gillingham took the lead after 7 minutes, Cody McDonald brushing aside the last defender rather too easily to slot the ball past the Dons keeper David Martin.
     It was 2-0 after 29 minutes when again McDonald found himself free in the Dons penalty area but this time Martin brought him down giving the referee no other option but to book him and award a penalty to Gillingham.  Danny Kedwell converted it placing the ball into Martin's right hand corner.
     Then, just one minute before half time MK found an unlikely way back into the game when a cross from the right was fumbled by Gillingham keeper Stuart Nelson and hit the post to rebound and strike Kortney Hause as he tried to make up for his keeper's mistake but the ball ended up in the back of the net which made it 1-2 at the break.
     Nelson's error proved costly for him as manager Peter Taylor substituted him for Glenn Morris at half time and as the game restarted MK Dons looked like a new team, it seemed as though the goal had sparked life into them, (or the manager's half time team talk), and in a five minute spell starting in the 68th minute they turned the game around with three goals, the first from Will Grigg when he headed home a cross from Danny Green, then Green supplied again in the 70th minute for McFadzean this time who looped his header over the stranded Gillingham keeper and the rout was complete in the 73rd minute when a Danny Green set-piece was deflected into his own net by Leon Legge which meant that Gillingham were now losing 4-2 but had scored four of the goals.

The North Stand for Away Supporters

     The Stadium MK looks very impressive from a distance a big black, rounded structure that made you think you were approaching the ground of a Premier club and then you get a little closer to it and it looks like it's been dumped on some wasteland near Asda and Ikea.
     The interior again looks fantastic, it's vast with black seats, (not very comfortable), apart from the white ones that spell out MK Dons in the Stand where I was sitting which was the East.  It has two tiers and between those tiers is an area filled with food outlets and toilets which are the best I've seen at a football ground yet.
     There was 7,595 at the ground on Saturday and yet the place looked empty, it's a 30,500 all seated Stadium built in 2007 for a bigger status team than the one that is currently playing in league one of the English football league.

     Going back to the incident on the train, when I arrived home my Wife informed me that the person who had stole my phone had took pictures of herself and tried to post them on her Facebook account using my phone but these pictures ended up on my account because my phone is logged into my account.  It was the picture of the girlfriend of the drunken youth that was standing over my coat in between the train carriages.  She was wearing a hat with the word DOPE on it, well, she got that one right.

                                                                       Match Details