Sometimes, there isn’t a beginning. You follow the thread, it divides into new strands and becomes entangled in others, until the ends of some meet the beginnings of others and the waft and weft combine tightly until there is no beginning and no end, just an indefinable whole.

On Saturday, it was impossible to know where we were, let alone where we’d come from. Nerves jangled in the background. But there was a roller-deck of seemingly infinite possibilities; what did we want? What would it mean? Would a handsome victory set us up for a monumental humiliation in the second leg? A crushing defeat dash our hopes on the reality’s ragged rocks? A narrow loss or win resolve little? A draw nothing at all.

And even if we do prevail, do we really want this? Do we want our delusions expanded to an uncontrollable amorphic size simply waiting to be swatted into gas. Beyond that, a season in the Championship of furious struggle. Do we want this?

The anxieties, though real, were shooting off in multiple directions, but it was hard to place them. For the 2010 play-offs we had to win, it was of existential importance. The campaigns 2020 and 2021, in the context of a pandemic, felt more like we were grappling to re-gain some agency in our lives; playing the games was enough. This season’s different.

With the whole of Saturday to negotiate before the game, there wasn’t a template to follow. Some tried to extend their 3pm kick-off routine; a quick drink and catch up with friends stretched from a couple of hours to five or six. Others, like me, tried to squeeze a normal day in, but I was still time-checking whenever there was a discussion about going off plan. 

“I don’t want to be THAT GUY, and I know there’s still six hours to kick-off, but if we do go to that cafe, we might not be able to get to Sainsbury and have a barbeque before I have to go. And I have to go.”

In the end, I was a bit early, the contingency I’d added, plus the secret other contingencies that I ladled on top weren’t needed. The patchy parking – some cars too close, some gaps too big – betrayed the tetchiness of the day.

Despite the size of the occasion, a sell-out is a sell-out, we know from experience that there’s a place for everyone to park and time for everyone to get into the ground. It’s the behaviour that changes in games like this, everyone else has the same idea about getting there a bit early. Once at the ground, the inadequate armada of burger vans, shoved aside to make way for Sky’s trucks, pushed the queues into the streams of people walking the stadium. Everyone was ‘soaking up the atmosphere’, which isn’t something you do for the visit of Port Vale or Burton. We all feed off each other’s nervous tension. You expect it to heighten the frenzy, but it does the opposite, it creates a dense unnerving calm. 

Usually snatched conversations were elongated, do you know which rejuvenated indie rock singer has been training with the club? We walked some more and bumped into Gingermoods and Jonny Biscuits, fresh from their ill-advised afternoon in the pub. Some of their new pub mates weaved past. The mood was buoyant, not anxious or expectant, there was no sense of danger or foreboding. We all have this curious intertwined life, wound round the spindle of the little club that plays this daft game; it just makes us happy and content. 

In the end, we didn’t get to our seats until ten minutes before kick-off. The stands were full, the handle of the pre-match routine began to crank. From the North Stand, a giant flag appeared, in the East Stand others unfurled while all around balloons, placed in every seat, were inflated. Real people did this for others to enjoy without any recompense. It’s community action, in action. It’s bewildering to think that some have the arrogance to want to deny it.

Football in May is truly beautiful, the sun shone, bathing the stadium in an ecclesiastical light, it was warm enough for short sleeves so the dashes of yellow burnt brightly across the stands. Old shirts were everywhere; the 1996 promotion season, 2007 in the Conference, 1992 ‘TV distortion’ away kit, even a 1983 Jim Smith vintage pinstriped beauty. Proof of a rich and deep history. Those who choose to belittle or deny football’s impact on creating, sustaining and enriching communities, can’t see the evidence in front of them because they choose not to.

The teams appeared, the noise was cacophonous, banners extended, the flags wafted gracefully, almost in slow motion, while flames burnt a heat haze into the scene. Balloons cascaded from every side of the ground. This wasn’t the tightly organised displays of the Ultras, it felt more organic, bannermen of the clans raising their standards aloft. It was positively medieval. 

From here, we had to extract a game of football. The oddity is that it almost seems the least important part of the festival. It’s the epicentre that creates a centrifugal force, but the closer you get to it, the less interesting it is.

Buoyed by a torrent of nervous energy, the game zipped by, carried by an unstoppable momentum. But through this we controlled the game; a few weeks ago we’d torn Peterborough to pieces in an almost comical abstraction of what football actually is. It wasn’t going to be like that again, despite Josh Murphy looming in on Jadel Katongo, revitalising the PTSD he’d suffered in our 5-0 mauling. 

They call it vivo exposure therapy, where you calm the senses by flooding them with previous trauma. Murphy flooded Katongo until he found a way to cope with a series of petty fouls. Others followed suit, neither side were ready to open up, the onus was on us to attack while they were happy to obfuscate; just physical enough to have an impact, not enough to grab the referees attention. There was a mutual respect, a taught tension. The ball kept moving, but with both teams well drilled, real progress was hard to find. 

Half-time came with just a minute of injury time, a tribute to the quality and spirit of the game. The crowd had lulled a little, that early energy wasn’t inexhaustible. The second half continued in a similar vein, though there was a pressing need to take some advantage, Peterborough were happy to absorb the growing tension and recycle it into their own forward movement. 

Despite looking a little on the back foot, after eight minutes Josh Murphy forced a corner, inevitably off Katongo, leave him alone Josh, he’s only young. Murphy casually scooped a ball off its plinth, set it in the quadrant and swung a deep high cross seemingly to nowhere. Only Cameron Brannagan seemed to sense the flight of the ball from the moment it left Murphy’s boot, a master of revitalising lost causes, he strained every sinew to guide it back across goal. It looked like a hopeless attempt to keep the ball alive, but it dropped from the night sky and two yards out Elliott Moore rose to guide it home. 

Noise cascaded from every corner, a fevered turmoil binding the emotions and bodies in the crowd. Ten thousand people, bound by a quirk of geography and deep shared experience accessing a new level of awareness. A profound rich tapestry of emotion. 

Moore set off on a directionless run, pupils dilated, a blizzard of elongated arms and legs, leaping, punching the air, it was like watching an armful of snooker cues being thrown down the stairs. When he eventually stopped, others hung off every limb. It was like Buckaroo or maybe a metaphor for how much the squad relies on him. 

The remaining 35 minutes were blurred, we seemed composed, but the taught, strained tension between the sides remained. Eventually, we tired, substitutions couldn’t relieve the pressure. We retreated into a compact shape allowing them to set up camp closer to our goal. With no outlet, the pressure ratcheted up, until Cumming was forced to save smartly at his near post to keep the lead intact.

But we were defensively resolute, led by Moore, and his henchman Brown, while Stevens and Bennett repelled the threats on the flanks. The whistle went, a loud primal roar filled the air. A banshees wail of triumph, though nobody thinks this is done.

But through the paroxysm, came a siren; all we want is something to cling to, something to hope for, a beacon of light to follow and trust. You might not like football, you might not like Oxford United, you may be sceptical about a new stadium for the club, but on nights like this, you can surely see that basic human need?