I’m still coming to terms with how quickly Oxford United are transforming. Last night was a good example; there was a time when pregame fireworks and light shows were the preserve of special occasions, now we simply call it Tuesday.

The teams were welcomed onto the pitch by a crescendo of noise and fire while the crowd recovered from the strained parping of two trumpeters playing the Theme from Space Odyssey with the gusto of a school orchestra trying to be heard above a force nine hurricane.

Still, an odyssey is appropriate for two teams who have spent the last 50 years travelling the divisions like the Littlest Hobo trying to find themselves. Perhaps the night was a celebration of the fact we’ve played each other in each of the top five divisions of English football and still don’t seem to know what our natural level is.

For all our familiarity, the encounter felt like we were a divorced couple awkwardly bumping into each other at a party. Last year, Luton were a Premier League novelty act which played out like an octogenarian grandma on the Vegas penny slots who found herself at the high roller’s poker table on the way to the toilet. We’re still coming to terms with the idea of being a Championship club and praying we can avoid relegation. Now, they’re facing demotion to League One and we’re the form side in the division. It’s a topsy turvy world.

Confidence was high after our recent run, but as soon as the game started, something didn’t feel right. It was like we’d got dressed in the dark and put on two shoes of the same colour but different styles. Perhaps we’d underestimated them after such an assured performance at the weekend, it wouldn’t be the first false dawn we’ve seen over the years.

We hadn’t drifted into total ineptitude, but we were second to everything. It took eleven minutes for those margins to reach critical mass when a series of half-hearted clearances and under-powered tackles allowed Tom Krauß to find himself in enough space to blast the ball beyond Cumming for the opening goal.

The shock hardly unleashed a tsunami of vengeful anger. We looked to Gary Rowett to step in and reassert his brand of utilitarian football which has been so successful.

This is not what happened.

I once read about the techno maverick Richard James, aka Aphex Twin, who was playing a set at the Berlin Love Parade back in the 1990s. On the back of a float surrounded by thousands of teutonic ravers, he built an auditory collage that melded with the pulsating mass of human existence below. After navigating to the outer-extremes of his equipment’s capability, he reached for a soldering iron and started rewiring his equipment as it played. He literally built new instruments live on stage while those same instruments were still playing. New and unpredictable soundscapes emerged through a chaos of smoke and sparks. At one point he reached over only to find he’d accidentally soldered his fingers into his equipment and become a sonic cyborg. 

Staring across towards his misfiring team, Gary Rowett reached for his tactical soldering iron. Perhaps, for once, this was not a moment for conventional thinking.

After twenty minutes, I realised I couldn’t locate Peter Kioso. I counted eleven players on the pitch but none of them were the right-back. Then I realised he’d moved over to the left with Greg Leigh. Because they’d been moving around I’d counted them as one. Then Siriki Dembele appeared on the right alongside Shemmy Platcheta. Our centre-backs started playing as a front two while Cameron Brannagan, our holding central midfielder, was raiding the left wing. Will Vaulks appeared to be playing as the entire back-four, Jamie Cumming was probably serving in the North Stand snack bar. Every player was out of position throwing Luton’s beleaguered defence into a deep panic. This tactical chaos gave Brannagan the space to cross to Michal Helik who’d drifted across his bewildered marker. Helik raised his boot to make a connection as deft as brushing a feather off a baby’s forehead. The ball rolled obligingly beyond the keeper and into the bottom right hand corner for the equaliser. 

Rowett had bent light and found new colours in the rainbow, it was freeform jazz during a regimental march, a pickled salamander garnishing beans on toast. It was a moment of such unconventional thinking, those who witnessed it will probably spend the rest of their lives trying to comprehend it.

Following this aberration, the world seemed to correct itself for a moment; we drifted back into fitfulness and they wouldn’t die. It took just four minutes for them to re-take the lead, though only by the tiniest margin. It started to feel like one of those nights.

Then in swooped the Night Hawk, Ciaron Brown on the hour to connect with Cameron Brannagan’s corner for the equaliser. There’ll be a frozen day in hell before Ciaron Brown lets us down. 

The night didn’t feel done, they threatened in a vaguely impotent way, we probed without looking like scoring. Then, with twenty minutes to go, the ball was worked back to Will Vaulks who spun up a high cross into the box.

As the ball hung in the cold night air, eleven thousand people tracked its trajectory. Our collective gaze drifted beyond the ball towards its intended end point. Our eyes alighted as one on Greg Leigh alone in a crowd of players. The space around him was so capacious it seemed to be larger than the penalty box itself. It was as if he was in the middle of an ayahuasca induced psychotic episode or had engaged in a particularly intense course of tantric masturbation which had brought him to a new spiritual plain. How could the Luton defence not see him? And if they could, why couldn’t they close him down? Was Leigh there at all? Or was he an aberration?

The ball dropped, the collective hive-mind conjured up the sight of Leigh heading the ball harmlessly wide. Scenarios of failure played out over and over again; each one analogous of our past, but not our present. Would he spoon it into the keepers arms? Lash it over the bar? As each calculation concluded, the ball dropped.

Eventually it reached Leigh’s forehead who assuredly nodded it beyond the keeper and into the net. Our fears evaporated and our new found reality dawned. 

The pace of our transformation may slow eventually, it may suffer some set backs, but it won’t stop. There may be a time when progress feels like the club is drifting away from us. These are grand days, it may never get better than this.