Oxford United Chairman Sumrith 'Tiger' Thanakarnjanasuth wrote the following notes for the programme for Tuesday night's Sky Bet League One game against Shrewsbury Town:
Thank you for coming along tonight to see us take on Shrewsbury and hopefully we can make up this evening for the disappointment of losing to Plymouth on Saturday.
I thought the game itself was very easy to watch and both teams wanted to get the ball down and try to play nice football. Both sides scored with their first shot on target but there was a lot of nice approach play and not much to choose between the teams for long periods. Plymouth maybe deserved their lead at half time, but I thought we went at them and created chance after chance in the second half.
In the end we were caught out and they scored a third, but I thought that was a little bit of a harsh scoreline and there wasn't too much to choose between the teams on the day. Maybe the difference was that Plymouth are on a fantastic run of results at the moment; Saturday made it 12 games unbeaten since the opening day. As we have seen in the last two seasons, momentum is so important and we have gone on those runs ourselves. I hope tonight is the start of a similar run.
Off the pitch tonight we are welcoming members of a wide range of groups and communities from across Oxfordshire and inviting as many people as we can to talk to us about inclusivity at our games. Oxford as a city is very multicultural, but is that reflected in our crowds each week? We welcome everyone and we fight any kind of discrimination, but is there more we can do to make sure that absolutely everyone feels comfortable and welcome at football?
That may be a much wider discussion for the whole sport to consider but we want Oxford United to be at the forefront of this and tonight will maybe be a chance to hear from voices who aren’t heard enough at football right now.
And talking of voices, I think we have been missing a few fans who normally come to games. Saturday saw a big crowd but the data we look at shows that some of our fans have not been back yet after the pandemic. That is understandable, and yes, I haven’t been back myself yet, but that is due to travel restrictions! But we want to hear from you and find out more and so we will be launching a survey in which we ask fans for their views on the return to football: is everyone happy to be in a crowd? Are Covid protocols too strict or not strict enough? Are we doing enough to attract new fans?
We have reduced prices to just £10 for the home game against Morecambe and we are asking for your views as we try to make sure that this excellent team play exciting football in front of as many people as possible every week.
Tiger
You can read the full programme online at www.matchdayfix.com/oufc