Concern Over London Welsh and the Kassam Stadium

Picture from @bbcoxfordsport

It never gets boring supporting this football club. It seems like there is always something new to worry about, whether it's the latest James Constable transfer saga, uncertainty over the club's continuing progress, or some other impending doom. In fact, the average Oxford fan appears to spend most of his or her life in a perpetual state of alarm.

The latest potential crisis is the intention of London Welsh to use the Kassam Stadium to host Premiership rugby next season. The initial announcement was met with an inevitably mixed reception, but debates over the state of the pitch appear to have taken a back seat to more pressing issues following Welsh's Championship playoff final victory over Cornish Pirates. The issue is muddied by the ongoing tussle between London Welsh and the Rugby Football Union over the club's eligibility to enter next season's Premiership. However, while the national and even local media becomes caught up in the wider debate regarding rugby's Minimum Standards Criteria, Oxford fans have become increasingly alarmed by the potential implications of recent developments, while the football club itself has remained silent on the issue.

The uncertainty over the potential ground-share comes down to the RFU'srules regarding primacy of tenure. In a ground-share situation such as those at London Wasps, Saracens and London Irish – where the rugby club is a tenant of the football club – the rugby club must arrange to have a backup ground within 30 miles of its principal ground. In the case of London Welsh, this is rumoured to be Brentford's Griffin Park (42 miles from the Kassam), clearly in breach of the regulations. And yet London Welsh remain convinced that they have met the RFU's criteria. Their chairman, Bleddyn Phillips, is a notable lawyer, he is not likely to have missed this detail. This, of course, suggests that something else may be afoot. It could well be that London Welsh mean to challenge the RFU's Minimum Standards Criteria in a court of law, though they must have been aware of the rules before agreeing to them at the start of the season. The other possibility, and the one that has been causing unease amongst yellows fans, is that London Welsh have secured primary tenancy over the Kassam Stadium, which would relegate us to the status of secondary tenants and could have a number of implications for the club.

Foremost among these is that such a move would place Oxford in violation of the Football League's own rules regarding primacy of tenure. This would obviously leave us vulnerable to sanctions, and though I'm unsure how serious this might be we would almost certainly have to apply for special dispensation to compete in the League. This is the most serious possible consequence, but there are many others as well. OxVox have worked hard to get their Stadium Heritage Project off the ground, but the arrival of London Welsh will make it much more difficult to get permission for any future signage and it is possible that all traces of the club's identity, which the club and its supporters have had to fight for, could be removed from the stadium and be replaced with signs bearing the London Welsh logo (and anyone who watched their playoff final at the Kassam could see how keen they were to hide any trace of the football club). The club's fixtures would also be affected by such an arrangement, with rugby activities taking precedence over football. This could result in fixtures being moved at late notice, or having to play on Fridays or Sundays, which would considerably inconvenience us all.

Picture from @MilanVranjes

However, until further information is revealed we can only speculate. Much of the 'evidence' to support this scenario comes from remarks in the press that leave much room for interpretation. Mostly we are getting concerned over London Welsh's stated aim to 'turn Oxford into London Welsh' and comments from the club's Managing Director, John Taylor, who appeared to dismiss Oxford by stating that the club is irrelevant to their deal with Kassam. Such comments are contrary to the earlier impression given before the RFU's rejection of London Welsh, when it was suggested that a ground-share might be mutually beneficial.

Oxford United: Treble Winners

Picture from Shekicks

Sounds good, eh?

This isn't a full article, so to speak, but it seems only right to highlight the tremendous achievements of Oxford United Ladies, who, as we've discussed before, have just had a quite incredible season.

The Thorny Issue of Potential

As part of their recent 'Geographies of Football' series, the excellent Two Unfortunates website cast its eye over the economic potential of Oxford to progress to a higher level. Their conclusion, that Oxford have “League One potential but unlikely to rise higher” contradicted the generally received wisdom among Oxford fans that the area could support a Championship side at least. The opinion was dismissed out of hand as “pub banter thinly disguised as intellectual analysis” when word of the article reached the Yellows Forum, but were we right to dismiss it so quickly? Have we been guilty of excessive optimism over the medium term prospects of our club? There seems little doubt that we could – even should – be able to compete at League One level, but could we ever go higher?

TBFUTH Awards 2012: The Winners

It has certainly been a memorable season, if not necessarily a successful one. The end of the season, whether successful or not, is always a time to reflect on the events of the previous 12 months and we're now in full swing here on TBFUTH. We asked for your votes and we got them, so here are the people and the events that defined the 2011/12 season, as voted for by you.

Why Futsal is the Future for Oxford

The name Oxford Lions is probably unfamiliar to you. That's no surprise, this club is a baby both in terms of its size and age. However, in just over a year's existence they have risen to become one of the leading futsal clubs in the country. Perhaps the whirlwind success of the Lions is something we at OUFC should look to for inspiration.

Why Chris Wilder Should Go

Failure to even reach the playoffs this season has sparked heated debate over the future of manager Chris Wilder. Yellows Forum has come to resemble an online battleground since the curtain went down on our ultimately disappointing season, with every discussion degenerating into petty squabbling about whether Wilder should retain his job. Many of the sensible, well-reasoned points from both camps seem to be getting lost amongst the insults and childishness, so we've opened our pages to some sensible debate. Having brought you the views of several Oxford fans who thought Wilder should stay, we continue our debate over the future of the manager with why Wilder should leave.

Why Chris Wilder Should Stay

Failure to even reach the playoffs this season has sparked heated debate over the future of manager Chris Wilder. Yellows Forum has come to resemble an online battleground since the curtain went down on our ultimately disappointing season, with every discussion degenerating into petty squabbling about whether Wilder should retain his job. Many of the sensible, well-reasoned points from both camps seem to be getting lost amongst the insults and childishness, so we've opened our pages to some sensible debate, starting with those who want Wilder to stay.

TBFUTH Awards 2012: Cast Your Votes!

So, another season has drawn to a close and this one has ended in failure. Already the discussion has become a postmortem and no doubt the debate over what went wrong will continue relentlessly over the next few months. As is usually the case with any important OUFC matters, we'll be attempting to add our own piece to the debate and analysis, but to kick things off we're opening the site up to you with our inaugural TBFUTH Awards!

Cast your votes below, the polls will close on Sunday May 20^th and we'll announce the winners here!

THE POLLS ARE NOW CLOSED. YOU CAN VIEW THE RESULTS HERE.

Follow @TBFUTH

What the Stats Say...Port Vale

So this is the big one. Everything is riding on this weekend's clash with Port Vale – fail to win and our season is over; even a win won't be enough if Aldershot fail to get anything from Crewe (who are currently unbeaten in 15 games). And yet there's still that chance. Here's Matt Peck to preview the match that will decide our fate.