I’m afraid the Bolton defeat largely passed me by because on Friday night we received the call we knew was coming. My dad had finally succumbed to his increasingly complicated medical problems and passed away.

I’ve toyed with talking about it here, there were two reasons I decided that I would. For one, it would be odd to leave the weekend completely blank and secondly, his life can be viewed through an Oxford United lens that I probably won’t be able to reflect on elsewhere.

It’s also worth saying, I’m fine. Really. It is sad, but not unexpected. There is a sense of relief for him and for us.

He was part of a dwindling thread of Oxford fan that stretches back to our Southern League days. The stories he told seemed epic. As teenagers, he and his friends would pack sandwiches and take the bus from Abingdon to Headington every other Saturday. He was there for our ascent to the Football League and was at the legendary FA Cup ties against Blackburn and Preston in 1964. He’d tell stories of those days – about those great games and his favourite player, Ron ‘The Tank’ Atkinson. It chiselled into me that football was an adventure of which winning was only part.

When I was three, he took me to my first game against Southampton. I never thought to ask him why, but I suspect he’d have simply looked quizzical and say – ‘Why not?’. He was just passing on a gene, like a biological imperative.

We lived in Hertfordshire until I was eight, both sets of grandparents lived in Abingdon. Oxford wasn’t my club, but we’d always go to The Manor during our Christmas visits. I have a vivid memory of approaching the turnstiles in the London Road, to the right was a small kiosk which dealt with concessions for kids and OAPs. Dad would give me money and push me through. He’d rush through one of the regular turnstiles and catch me as I appeared on the other side. It only lasted a second, but it was my first experience of independence and responsibility.

I loved going to The Manor; looking into the cupboard sized club shop behind The London Road, the smell of cigarettes and fried onions, leafing through the programme we bought outside the ground, the freezing cold, the swearing, the players, the adultness of it all. 

When we finally moved to the area, he was keen to use the opportunity to go to games more regularly. It coincided with a revival under Ian Greaves. Just as we were getting somewhere, it was announced we were going bust. Then a man called Robert Maxwell appeared from nowhere. Dad wrote to Maxwell to plead with him to save the club, Maxwell wrote back offering him a job as an agent for the club’s lottery.

I remember once going to the game with my dad’s old school friends, the ones who’d taken those epic bus rides twenty years earlier. To me, they were just a bunch of old guys, but I now realise that they were probably only in their late thirties and were reliving the shared memories from their past. Even as they grew older, the club was a constant reference. 

My first away game was against Coventry in the FA Cup in 1982; the game descended into a violent mess, I remember dad asking a policeman how we could escape the riot safely. ‘Hide your scarves and run’ was the helpful response.

Maxwell’s money and Jim Smith’s genius sparked the club’s most glorious years. Of course, for dad who’d watched us as a non-league team just twenty years earlier, it must have felt like a blistering rise. To me, the 1960s was another universe and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world for a team to rise through the divisions. Only now, when a decade seems to pass every five minutes, can I get a sense of what it felt like for him and people of his generation to watch us beat the best and play in the First Division.

Visits of Manchester United and Arsenal illustrated our rise, but as we sythed through the divisions, our visits to The Manor became less frequent. Tickets were harder to get, games were more inconvenient, despite or maybe because of our success, I think he thought he lost a little bit of his club. He wasn’t a fan, it was deeper than that, in his twenties he followed Wolves around the country, but when the two teams faced each other, Oxford meant more to him. None-the-less we went to Stamford Bridge and won 4-1, we went to Anfield and Highbury and watched us compete as equals. Plus, of course, there was Wembley in 1986. 

As we slipped back down the leagues, he lost his appetite for live games. Plus, I was growing up, I guess. I can’t remember when, but there would have been a first time I went on my own, first time I travelled to a game on the bus, the first time I drove myself and the first away game I did on my own. Eventually, I went to games and he didn’t. He’d cast me on a path and I set sail.

He hated The Kassam, it was cold and inconvenient and the atmosphere was terrible. Increasingly he’d become one of those people who’d give their informed commentary on our progress from the comfort of his armchair. 

There was a brief return to regular football in the mid-2010s and even an away day to Burton in the FA Cup, but as he became more ill, his world shrank to become a series of doctor’s appointments and latterly, spells in hospital. Meaningful conversations about politics or life in general dried up and were replaced with tetchy and sensitive conversations about what the doctors had found and what might happen next. His illnesses – cancer twice, a stroke, diabetes – clouded his thinking and dimmed his sense of humour. I was the adult, he was an old man, but he couldn’t accept the shifting dynamic.

But, he listened to every game on the radio, the voice of Jerome Sale, Nathan Cooper and, of course, Nick Harris who narrated his whole football experience, were as familiar and comforting as any voice he heard. After big wins he’d always send a text to me. Even as he edged towards the end, I could always reach for the topic of Oxford to give us a safe space. On the day the surgeon recommended a move to palliative care, a clear signal the end was coming, we sat in silence and I sensed a wobble in his bottom lip. Eventually I told him about our trip to Peterborough the day before and we had an off-ramp from the grim realities of what we were all about to experience.

We had, you see, a shared objective, not separated by politics, generations or life experiences. However much the dynamic shifted in our relationship, or our opinions differed, we always wanted our club to win, it was really simple. It seems odd to me that he’ll never know if we survive this season, or get a new stadium or win the Champions League. But, then again, I guess that’s not really the point of all this, is it?