United lost again on their travels, their fourth consecutive away defeat, this time going down 3-1 at Mansfield. After dominating the opening quarter of an hour, Oxford fell behind to a 16th minute Junior Mendes strike. Just three minutes later Colin Larkin doubled the score following a poor back-pass by Jon Ashton, and United looked like they were about to collapse. Dean Whitehead pulled a goal back after 34 minutes, but just three minutes later Rhys Day restored Mansfield’s two-goal advantage, which they never looked like relinquishing. Indeed, Mansfield piled on the pressure in the second half and Oxford were fortunate that they didn’t concede any more goals.

Graham Rix tinkered with the side that lost at Northampton on Saturday, replacing Paul McCarthy with Ashton in central defence, and recalling James Hunt to replace Richard Walker in midfield. New signing Courtney Pitt was dropped to the bench, with Mark Rawle filling the left-winger berth. Pitt was brought on for Wanless with about 20 minutes to go, as United switched to 4-4-2 in a forlorn attempt to turn the game around.

Referee H Webb, taking charge of his first Oxford game of the season, didn’t show yellow cards to anyone, and generally had an anonymous, and therefore good, game. The attendance was 5,132. If someone would be so kind as to write us a match report and send it to us tomorrow, we’d be ever so grateful.

This was the only Division Three game this evening, and it sees Mansfield leap up into fifth place, above Oxford, and United dropped down to 7th, still five points clear of Yeovil, but having now played a game more. Some small consolation is the defeat by Sunderland of Franchise FC, thus relegating the cuckoos to Division Two. Hopefully, United supporters will be in a position to boycott the away game there next season.

Meanwhile, in the Conference, Chester look like they’ll be back in the league before too long as they stretched their lead to six points thanks to a 4-2 win over Aldershot. Two of Chester’s goals were scored by Phil Bolland. Telford beat play-off hopefuls Shrewsbury 1-0, thanks to a Sam Ricketts goal.