Unfortunately our intrepid reporter didn’t get to Abingdon United’s ground early enough to hear the teams in this penultimate friendly between a Hellenic League XI and an Oxford United XI. For the most part, Oxford?s players were unrecognisable, although in the first half Manny Omoyinmi, David Oldfield, Dexter Blackstock, Dwight Ciampoli, Mark Rawle and Simon Cox all played.

As far as the game was concerned, the Hellenic League Representative XI were quite a strong side and OUFC weren’t. Essentially, the Hellenic Leaguers scored, they scored again, they scored again and then it was half time and Oxford were 3-0 down.

Cox was at fault for at least their second goal and probably all three. After the third went in he muttered to himself “that was shit”, which summed it up really.

Blackstock had a talking to from the ref for a few tasty challenges, including doing his best to leave stud marks down the Hellenic ‘keeper?s chest. No one played particularly well for United.

In the second half the Hellenic lot scored again and United were 4-0 down and embarrassing. Blackstock was brought down in the area and took the lamest of penalties, bobbling along the ground at a snail’s pace to the ‘keeper?s left. Manny was not apparent in the second half. Cox did not trouble the referee in the second half either having been substituted for a trialist from Reading, apparently, who was at fault for the farcical own goal that gave HLRXI the 4-0 lead.

It was hot and Abingdon Utd were obviously expecting a big crowd. They must have been disappointed with perhaps only 100 in attendance. United’s final friendly before the start of the season is at Studley on Wednesday.