| Match | Programme | Food and Toilets |
Oxford |
By Simon Irving Front cover? Andy Crosby action photo, cut-out, against a standard Oxford shirt backdrop. OK. Value for money? Pages - 56 for £2.50 of which 16 were adverts. Compared to our leaflet which was released v Southend recently it deserves 4 out of 5. Decent content? Nicely presented, colourful. Standard fare, but just a little more of it spread out across the page count. Plenty of community and fan articles, though, and a rather unique free four-page centre insert featuring colour stickers to add to a collection (à la Merlin Premiership 2003 sticker collection no doubt, but dedicated to Oxford). Attractive design? Well presented throughout. Best article? Two pages of Oxford-Wrexham connections (who has played for both? etc), 'Around the ground' news section, and 'raging on' which is probably the best section, being an independent fans' view of the club. For a young U's fan, I would expect the stickers are essential. Overall? Not a bad programme, better than ours, but not quite as good as Bristol Rovers. |
Simon Irving: 'One bar at Oxford underneath the away supporters' zone (that being the "right-hand third" of the smaller of the two length-of-the-pitch stands). Fairly well organised, if a little slow. Prices standard - at least very easy to see on the menus before purchase. Tea and coffee same price as Wrexham's, but quality and quantity both 50% better! Lager available in pint bottles, very highly priced, but still nice to have the option, I guess. The Carlsberg big bottle is recommended. The piece-de-resistance was the locally produced Hot Dog, which was trumpeted on adverts as being something a bit special. It was rather alarming when the guy disappeared for quite some time to make them. When they arrived he said the tomato sauce was "already in them, mate" which was even more worrying! Anyhow, they did turn out to be something very special, unique if not exactly a traditional hot dog. They have a long bread-roll of a crusty variety (not the usual soft roll) which is then hollowed out from the end, through the centre of it only, right through, which then has a large sausage inserted into it (steady!) after having the tomato sauce inserted too. Thus, the hot dog is actually presented in a roll with no cuts in it, aside from the hole at one end! It lives in a special package too, so you can eat it a bit at a time with less mess that normal. The sausage meat was much better quality than your usual stuff too. No onions though, sadly. Well worth sampling!'
Simon Irving: 'Pretty new, obviously at Oxford, but not much capacity for the half-time clamour. The usual two-tin troughs. Ladies and Disabled had their own facilities obviously, and one would expect they were slightly superior! Mirror available for the lads to remove frost from their faces, and hot dog remnants.' |