United started the new season with a draw, as predicted, astonishingly, by Rage Online. It was all thanks to new skipper Chris Hargreaves’ header in the 87th minute, which equalised Tony Crane’s shot in the 62nd minute. United had the better of the first period, but fell away in the second half, and it wasn’t until Chris Hackett’s late free kick that Oxford broke the Grimsby defence down.

Brian Talbot’s first competitive line-up as manager gave a debut to all five of his major close-season signings, with Billy Turley nudging out player-of-the-season Chris Tardif for the goalkeeping slot. Lee Mansell lined up on the right side of defence, with Chris Willmott, Jon Ashton, and Matt Robinson making up the rest of the back line. Hackett played on the right of midfield, with Barry Quinn and Hargreaves making a good start to their partnership in the centre, and Stuart Gray on the left. Up front the initially preferred striking partnership was Lee Bradbury and Steve Basham. Immediately after Grimsby took the lead Basham was replaced by Craig Davies, and with 15 minutes left Talbot introduced another debutant, Rob Hughes coming on for Gray. Jude Stirling was on the bench, as was Ben Weedon, who will have a few more opportunities to break the youngest-ever United player record in the next couple of weeks.

The referee was Anthony Bates, who gave yellow cards to Ashton for a foul and to Bradbury for several fouls. The first game of the new season was watched by 4,706, and a match report, by James Beard, can be found here.

On the opening day, only five fourth division teams were able to being with a victory, Wrexham’s 2-0 win over Boston being the best scoreline. Orient and Cheltenham both won 2-1, over Macclesfield and Bury respectively, while Chester won 1-0 at Mark Wright’s Peterborough, and Rochdale won by the same scoreline at Shrewsbury. Tommy Mooney opened his account for Wycombe with the equaliser in their 1-1 draw at home to Carlisle.

On a much sadder note, former United physio Ken Fish died aged 91 on Thursday night. Fish joined United under Arthur Turner back in 1964, and was at the club until his retirement in 1988, having received Maurice Evans’ Milk Cup winning medal in 1986.