In 1988, following an ill-disciplined display against Norwich in an ill-disciplined season, Maurice Evans was forced to defend his team’s tactics. Oxford had seven players sent off that season, an unremarkable number nowadays, but this was a time when even bookings would be explicitly mentioned in match reports as incidents of note.

Oxford had lost Billy Whitehurst to two bookings and put Wayne Biggins in hospital with concussion, but Evans was insistent that his team weren’t dirty. All he wanted, he said, was a bit of consistency from the referee.

Thirty-five years later, this refrain is still churned out on the regular. It’s often presented as a base level requirement that everyone should be able to achieve. It’s like GB News’ claim to have a monopoly over ‘common sense’, which isn’t something everyone knows as they’d like to believe, but simply what they believe multiplied by an assumption that everyone is the same multiplied by a concoction of arrogance and stupidity.

What is rarely discussed is that consistency is, in fact, the hardest thing to achieve. It’s not difficult to see why that is; there are two constantly changing variables in football – the incidents themselves and the judgement of the referee. It’s like a walk I once did during lockdown, the instructions said to walk across a field by a busy road to see the happiest cows in the Chilterns. As the road was empty and the cows nowhere to be seen, my two points of reference had changed and I couldn’t be sure I was interpreting the instruction properly. 

The introduction of VAR – introduced to improve consistency – has only served to prove this; you can look at an incident two hundred times from a billion camera angles and still wage a two-hour unresolvable debate about what the resulting decision should be.

So, inconsistency is an integral part of the game, I would argue it’s even part of its appeal. Someone on Radio Oxford said the referee ruined the draw against Wycombe, I would argue his performance enhanced the spectacle by contributing to what became a thoroughly enjoyable wild ride of an afternoon.

That said, the inconsistent decision of the non-award of a penalty for us and the one he gave against Marcus McGuane was unforgivable. Both offending players slipped as the ball came to them, both had planted a hand on the turf to break their fall, both had the ball hit their arm, both were accidental – unless you believe they consciously thought the best thing to do when defending a cross was to lie on the floor – both prevented the ball from continuing to an opposition player in a dangerous position.

I’m with Cameron Brannagan, who said that he doesn’t know what constitutes a handball anymore, but it’s immaterial, it’s rare that you see two incidences so similar in the same game. For the referee, it’s a gift – even if you’re wrong both times, just give the same decision to both.

It was far from the only incident, the other two penalties looked soft, an unpunished challenge on Mark Harris looked not dissimilar to the decision that did go his way and there was the ludicrous decision to pull the play back with Mark Harris through on goal.

Obviously, you need to be a special kind of sadist to be a referee. You are the least liked person in the game, you need the self-confidence to make decisions knowing people will hate you for it, as you progress through the ranks that only increases. So, on some level, you have to enjoy it. There’s probably a special kind of buzz they get from being so bad they have to be escorted off the pitch by stewards.

It creates an inverted system, only the proper weirdos make it to the top because the normal people recognise how pointless and unrewarding being a referee is long before you get anywhere near the Football League. Lots of people like a playful slap on the bottom during sexy-time, far fewer want their testicles electrocuted. But they’re definitely the ones proudly posting photos of their fried gonads on special interest forums.

That said, in normal circumstances, referees are consistently inconsistent – they might make five bad decisions, but perhaps only one will have a material impact. It’s the responsibility of teams to insulate themselves from the consequences of that one meaningful bad decision. There’s always a risk of conceding a goal from a soft penalty or a silly mistake, so you’ve got to put yourself out of reach before that happens.

And that, again, is what we failed to do, despite everything, the outcome was probably a fair result. Post-Ainsworth Wycombe (or maybe it’s pre-Ainsworth, given his sacking by QPR) aren’t quite the ugly, aggressive mess they’ve been in the past. ‘Typical non-league’ muttered Brinyhoof thirty years after their introduction to Football League. They’re a solid enough unit, but the game felt a lot more polite than in recent encounters, something which we should have been able to benefit from. 

Once again, we opened in a measured and controlled way, Marcus McGuane patrolled the midfield, but with McEachran sitting and not offering the movement you get from Brannagan, there were limited options to advance the ball into dangerous areas. When those chances did come, Harris struggled to convert. It’s not all about Harris though, he is a presence so holding the ball up and making a nuisance of himself should give Bodin and Rodrigues chances, but they also seem to lack the urgency to pick up loose balls or get a shot away.

Without the extra goal or that sense of urgency, we invited the referee’s erratic performance to influence the game. No doubt there were ‘learning points’ for him to take on board if he’s willing to do that, but expecting consistency shouldn’t be part of any game plan.

It doesn’t feel like players playing poorly, more a product of the system and culture. You get the feeling that Manning is in no rush to change that, it’s just who he is and the way he plays. It’s not working at the moment, but we’re still the second best team in the division. Chris Hogg spoke well after the game about not getting too carried away with the short term blips if the direction of travel is good. Getting hung up on the referee is fun in the moment, but largely irrelevant.