The club previewed Saturday’s cup game against Maidenhead with some social media content showing our win over Exeter last season “The goals were flowing against Exeter City last season in the historic competition.” it said.

‘In the historic competition’ sounds like a piece of Year 7 history homework. A bland idiom of someone who doesn’t care. You’re not allowed to dislike the FA Cup, in fact, most managers are at pains to ‘respect it’ like tolerating your racist grandad because he fought in some war or other. 

It’s a shame, because the FA Cup should be a vibrant competition, the final should have the same cultural footprint as the Superbowl in the US; an event that everyone watches. A one off series of events, leading to a showpiece involving every club in the country; it has something the Premier League can’t nor wants to offer.

The FA Cup as a cultural asset would make the earlier rounds more engaging – they could be something that families and those who are half-interested attend, like Boxing Day games. It could be marketed as a national mobilisation, like non-league day, doing something engaging and healthy, spending time with your family and going to see your local FA Cup game.

Instead, it’s been asset stripped – it’s now called the Emirates FA Cup – it doesn’t even get top billing. Even the Americans, who invented commercialism, wouldn’t sell itself so cheaply.

The media have largely given up on the opening rounds, the clubs’ attitude of disinterest is now an act of professionalism. In 2020 we played Hartlepool, there was a decent ticketing offer which attracted a lot of casual supporters and their families. The attendance was over 6,000 but it felt like more. We conceded early, which made things uncomfortable, then put on a brilliant performance, including a wonder goal from Shandon Baptiste, which made the whole occasion a big positive. Non-league opponents doesn’t inevitably mean a boring game.

Yesterday we were all kettled into the smallest spaces the club could get away with. The North Stand was closed, only two blocks of the East Stand were open, the section of the South Stand Upper where my season ticket is, was opened for sale on Thursday, after I’d bought my ticket. Instead, we were all squashed together at the fence end sections. We were squished with all the weirdos who go to FA Cup games against non-league teams, which is a bit jarring when you realise you’re one of them.

Add to that the lack of outside catering, the parking problem and the road closures – admittedly outside the club’s control – the magic of the cup seemed to manifest itself as being the worst experience you can offer without committing a war crime.

To give him credit, Liam Manning maintained a reasonably strong team, although it’s hard to say if Brannagan’s involvement was because he’d missed a couple of games, whether Thornily would have played had Sam Long been fit or whether Harris might have been rested if he didn’t need a goal. 

We started in that mechanical, methodological way we do. Controlled and unthreatening – an AI robot who sits in the corner doing your knitting, but can kill you with a single blow. The strategy seemed to be to contain them until they ran out of steam, then ease away. Goals would be a by-product. 

Typically, Billy Bodin’s goal was well worked, Brannagan to Mills, Mills into a dangerous area, Bodin side foots home. Very xG. There was little interest in doing more than we needed to. 

While it was 1-0, there was always likely to be a period in which they would have chances. The less interest we showed, the more confident they became. They got chances, which bred more confidence. We benefited from the unintended bias that referees have towards the bigger side – where we’re more likely to get the benefit of the doubt in marginal decisions. A robust challenge against us must be a foul. A few times Elliott Moore fouled his attacker by stepping across his path but the referee judged that Moore was just showing his professional nous. More than once they should have scored, they just weren’t quite good enough.

It was an interesting test for the players on the margins; Thornily, McEachran and Negru looked a long way from first choice starters. Maybe that’s the point; there have been questions asked about Negru’s absence, and while his wasn’t a bad performance you can see he’s not a certain starter yet.

Bodin’s second was again well worked, but by then Maidenhead had run out of steam and ideas, the strategy had worked. It triggered a mass exit of Oxford fans, the kind of thing you normally see when we’ve just conceded a third in injury time. We’ve clinically dismembered them, let’s hit the road.

Ultimately, it was a bland demonstration of performative disinterest in the FA Cup. Which is such a shame because it doesn’t need to be like that, the crowd was a couple of thousand short of what it could have been, we could have made it a bit of an event, we could have score three or four. Liam Manning said afterwards that the most important thing was the result. And we all nodded in a knowing way. Is it, though? Could it been a little bit more than that?