The bloke near me was booing so loudly, the sound distorted in my ear canal and battered my eardrum. I’d long since lost the narrative thread of the game in front of me, it had become gripped by a collective psychosis. Only some deep neuro-processing could re-programme the noise and assure me that I wasn’t under personal attack. 

The anger was being directed at Nathan Smith, the Port Vale centre-back who’d survived being lightly dusted by Mark Harris’ forearm. As the ball moved on, the boos subsided again. 

“Ah, he’s just the manifestation of our misfortune.” Said someone behind me poetically.

Liam Manning puts his water bottle right in the corner of his technical area with an unnerving preciseness and acuity. The bottle’s edge kisses the white line, it’s no accident. It’s an insight into his mindset. You suspect when he’s making sweet love to his wife, and their bodies entwine to form a singular pleasure, there’s a part of his mind on the fact his socks haven’t been tied up in a neat ball and put on the chair in the corner of the room.

At one point the bottle was lying on the floor, he may even have kicked it in frustration. He knew it wasn’t where it should be. The game continued to demand his attention, but he’d glance over his shoulder, edge back towards it to try and pick it up. Play continued, he couldn’t get to it while analysing the play, it was a battle of science and emotion.

In the other dugout was Andy Crosby, not quite the upright statuesque centre-back he once was. None would pass when he was Oxford captain and he’d take great pleasure at troubling the top goalscorer’s chart due to his penalties alone. In 2002/3, he scored only one goal fewer than Steve Basham.

Crosby’s time at Oxford was under Ian Atkins, of course, and he’d set his side up in a very Atkins kind of way. Shape, shape, shape, try and nick something from set plays. That’s what proper-football men do, it’s old science, and one that’s often dismissed. Modern, data-driven managers would do well not to ignore it completely.

Much like the game against Charlton, our own system seemed passive, it was no doubt limited by Vale, but, Marcus McGuane aside, there seemed little urgency. At times it felt like watching a training game, impressive on one level, but lacking in the purpose needed to win the game. Nobody had that nasty killer edge, where you break the lines to get on the end of a neatly constructed move.

Few saw Harris’ elbow, but it raises the question that are these decisions punishing? Within thirty seconds, his victim was trotting over to the touchline to take a drink, he’d hardly had his cheek bone shattered, he didn’t even have a physio check him out. Shouldn’t the act be judged at least partly on its impact, rather than what it theoretically means about the philosophy of the game? 

Manning criticised our discipline, dutifully trotting out that line about ‘you can’t raise your hands like that’, but from that moment on, his water bottle didn’t sit in the corner. He was being beaten by old thinking and the frustration was like talking to a baby boomer about Just Stop Oil.  

The opening goal, inevitably, came from a well-executed set piece. I bet our ‘numbers’ looked great, but at risk of turning into Sam Allardyce, only one number counted.

The reshuffle after Harris’ dismissal left Cameron Brannagan as our centre-forward, it was like that puzzle with the chicken, the wolf and the corn trying to get over the river. You think you’ve cracked it and then you realise the wolf has ripped the chicken’s head off. Brannagan looked like the spare part and wisely Manning tried again.

Amazingly, in the capacious time-space we now call injury time, we equalised. Honestly, you could slow-roast a leg of lamb in time added on nowadays. A whole new game emerged, Greg Leigh, a man seemingly eager to please and happy to be alive, swept home for a point. Given that we’d convinced ourselves of the injustices of the referee, a point would have been acceptable.

Then Leigh jumped in on a challenge taking the player rather than the ball. A second yellow, after he’d picked up the first for a challenge in the first half which seemed to be partly down to him losing his footing. I suspect Leigh is going to be a lot of fun this season, and that Cairon Brown may get a few more games than he was expecting.

Almost immediately, another lunge, this time from Stevens. No complaints. Penalty. 2-1. 

Early in the game there was a weak rendition of ‘we’re top of the league’, but it didn’t sit well last week and didn’t this either. In some ways, I’m more comfortable being sixth with something to grow into. It was, above all, an enjoyable madness.

The Manning philosophy was beaten by old science, a lesson which will need to be learnt fairly quickly. League 1 is not going to be academy players playing from the back, some teams have some lived experience which has beaten the idealism out of them. How we respond to that will determine our season.