It's often said that three is a charm, and nobody will be hoping that's the case more than Anthony Tonkin.
Sunday's clash with York will represent the third time that 'Tonks' has been involved in a Play-Off Final, though his record under the arch thus far is perhaps not as impressive as he'd have liked.
"With my Wembley record I was hoping that we'd go up automatically," laughs Tonks. "This is technically my third time there and both of those games ended with my club losing 2-0, so I'm hoping that I'm finally due a good day! The first game was when I was at Yeovil and we were beaten by Blackpool, where I was in the initial squad but didn't make the final sixteen, and then obviously last season at Cambridge we got beaten by Torquay. Chris Hargreaves and Matt Green were both in the Torquay squad that day so there's been a bit of banter to say the least, but the important thing is that we do everything we can to get promoted, full stop. That was the main goal for me when I signed and the fact that we're now one game away from potentially achieving that is fantastic. Fair play to Stevenage, they went on a great run and would have made it difficult for us no matter what we did, but everyone is on a high at the moment and we're all looking to take that positivity into the game at Wembley."
Since arriving from Cambridge United in a 12th Man funded signing in January Tonks has already experienced both highs and lows on the pitch inside four short months, though he's had plenty to get to grips with off the pitch to boot.
"It's been a rollercoaster four months in a few different ways. Until this season I'd never changed clubs in January and I've had to relocate as part of that, and that's definitely a hard thing to do because you're trying to get settled as part of a team while everything else is going on at home. When you move in the summer you've got a good couple of months to get everything sorted and then you have pre-season to settle in at the club, so that's been a major difference, but for both myself and the team as a whole everything seems to have come good at exactly the right time."
As someone who has visited the home of English football, how does he describe the feeling of playing at one of the most famous stadiums in the world?
"All professionals want to play at Wembley, particularly in a final, and the fact that it looks like we're going to take more than 30,000 fans there only makes you more determined as a player. A lot of people will be wondering whether that type of support gives you a boost or whether it adds pressure, and I suppose that really depends on whether you've played in front of it before or not, but we're lucky enough to have a good number of players in our squad who have played there and know what it's about. I think that showed against Rushden in the second leg because we were able to use the energy that came from a big crowd to our advantage, whereas they looked a little bit overawed by it at times, and I hope that we can do the same at Wembley and use the passion and energy of our fans to really drive ourselves on."
Over the past four years there has been no end of teams pushing themselves to the limits when it comes to taking on the U's, and with Sunday's game meaning so much to both sides it's safe to say that the toughest test of all is preparing to rear its head.
"It's no secret that whenever a club plays Oxford they treat it as a cup final, and as someone who has played against the club several times in the past I can tell you that's definitely the case, so the fact that this actually is a cup final is going to ensure that we face a really, really tough test. Oxford is an absolutely massive club at this level and we're always going to have a lot of expectation on our shoulders, but even before I arrived they've always performed well on the big stage throughout the current season. It doesn't really come much bigger than Sunday, and it's up to us to make sure that we save the biggest performance of all for that one."
