Funnily enough, Oxford against Woking wasn’t trending on Twitter on Wednesday night but the Ronaldo interview with Piers Morgan was. I didn’t watch it myself, preferring to pick up the main gist from tweets and headlines generated over recent days.

I mean, To Long Didn’t Read: from what I can gather Ronaldo is struggling to come to terms with the idea that his power is on the wane and that football is moving on. He seems to cling to the notion that it somehow owes him something beyond the millions he earns.

Piers Morgan is a professional controversialist; his job is to stoke tension between people for clicks and views and Ronaldo was all too willing to provide the fuel. But, the channel the interview was on is barely watched. In truth, it’s a big echo chamber; less and less people care about Ronaldo’s woes at Manchester United or Piers Morgan’s opinion about anything. Hopefully it’s a sign we’re seeing the final thrashings of an era of tedious confrontation.

For me, this brooding sense of an end of days has cast a shadow over everything this season making it difficult to engage. Even this World Cup is forcing us to have to justify the complex relationship between football and the wider world. You can’t play/watch/commentate on football without it being a damning reflection of your lack of a moral compass, and yet it simply isn’t that simple.

It’s hard to know if the win against Woking was the preserve of something good and wholesome, a nourishing counterbalance to the excesses of Ronaldo and the World Cup, or simply another brick of futility in a wall of nothingness. 

The FA Cup, the principle that a little team can beat a big team, should represent the very essence of football, celebrating the principles of the footballing pyramid and the joy even amongst the haves and have nots, we are all basically the same.

Some treated the game like Conference cosplay, a hark back to a bleak yet happy time when we could be in the thrall of Matt Day and Carl Pettifer. We had nothing, but we were happy. But it also had a strong Checkatrade vibe; a game nobody really wanted, not in that weather, not on a Wednesday. Was it a happy place, a sad place, or a distraction?

I’ve got to hand it to the manager, fans and players for cracking on, though; it can’t be easy for them either, they’re affected by all the same issues that we are. The only option is to keep plugging away, hoping that the ugly messes left by the excesses of Ronaldo, FIFA and Qatar will soon be behind us, that the world will, at some point, improve. Hopefully something will a spark a revival back to a happier time, even if it’s only at a football level; a spirited return to form, a cup giant killing, a new player. You live in hope.