Earlier in the season, we opened a door that revealed a light so bright it hurt our eyes. Form that only compared to our greatest seasons. For a club like Oxford, where promotion comes about once a decade and championships are so rare their DNA is kept in the secretive Svalbard seed vault in preparation for the apocalypse, the light was so intense, so ethereal, and so unreal we were drawn to it in mesmerised rapture.

Its brightness was intensified further by what had come before, not just the featureless grey of a relegation battle, but the messy cacophony of Karl Robinson’s chaotic final months rang in our ears and fractured our spirit. Our armistice, the win at Forest Green secured our future, but the experience had ravaged us. The beautiful, pure light of the opening weeks warmed our sallow skin and soothed our sores.

And then the door slammed shut and the light disappeared. Liam Manning looted our backroom staff and left, our form withered, Des Buckingham arrived and stepped into a world he hadn’t expected. Everyone was rubbing their eyes, bumping into each other, some scratched at the door that was once open trying to find a handle. Some simply stood for days pawing at it until their fingers grew numb, preying it might re-open.

In more recent weeks, we’ve started to acclimatise, our title ambitions were just a kink. We were lost but we’re now reconfiguring, resettling into a more familiar role, some moved quicker than others, many are still not there. Trauma takes longer to resolve than you think.

It wasn’t all bad – Oisin Smyth’s howitzer against Charlton, pulling apart Carlisle, a last-minute equaliser against Portsmouth. Some of it was very bad – conceding six at Coventry and five at Bolton. Mostly it was frustrating, a long and boring rehabilitation and renewal, full of false hopes and disheartening setbacks.

Then there was an enjoyable Easter romp against Fleetwood which we felt we deserved for the pain we’ve had to go through. Burton offered another opportunity to step forward, but we’ve tried stepping things up before and found ourselves back on the sofa nursing our wounds. We are all Marcus Browne.

The season’s been going for nine months now, Mark Harris, the world’s most streaky striker, has scored his thirteen league goals in just four of them. Having broken his latest barren run on Monday, he was off again on Saturday. First, latching onto Tolaji Bola’s comedy defensive error on the half-way line to race clear. With enough time to think, and to phone for a car insurance quote if he wanted to, he went beyond the keeper and slotted home. Confidence rekindled, on the hour, he was left to mind his own business while Josh Murphy ran the Burton defence ragged and was free to tap in for number two. Josh Murphy to Mark Harris, the new James Henry to Matty Taylor?

Moments later it was three; if this season gives us nothing else, then the great catharsis of Josh Murphy will be one of its lasting joys. Remembering his long absences and his fitful attempts at regaining form, to see him streaking from one end of the pitch to the other with the freedom of a gazelle makes your heart burst. He may yet decide that there’s more to life than simply climbing football’s slippery pole and stay with us, but he’s too good for this division. If he does seek pastures new at the end of his contract, let’s hope he remembers us as integral to his renewal. There are perhaps, few clubs and in Des Buckingham, few coaches who would have given him the latitude to re-find his form.

Talking of which, watching James Henry score goals nowadays is like watching those videos of old men, crippled by age and arthritis, throwing their walking sticks away and dancing with abandon to street jazz. By his own admission, he joined Oxford because it worked for his family, he’ll be under no illusions now that his career is now in its twilight. But there will still be moments, fleeting flickers of nostalgia which will remind him of what he once was. Each one may be the last, so he needs to savour them – nodding home against Portsmouth and now turning his defender and sliding a shot beyond Crocombe for number four. Let’s hope he’s not full of angst about his future and is just enjoying the sunset of his present.

And so, we turn again and adjust our sights to the defining week of the season; it’s a more familiar hue; we’re no longer honey trapped by the promises of ruthless achievement. We’re back to being hopeful outsiders, perennial short-fallers, the club we fell in love with. We’re not an unrelenting success machine, marching our way to the immoral corporate oblivion of the top divisions, we secretly enjoy the struggle, the precipitous falls compensated by the moments of lasting pleasure. The reality is that we don’t want the struggle of a season in the Championship or beyond that, have the detached sanitation of being a Top 30 Club, but we’ll keep striving for it because that’s why we’re here and that’s what we do.