Oxford United Chairman Sumrith 'Tiger' Thanakarnjanasuth wrote the following notes for the MK Dons match programme:
Good evening everyone and thank you for coming along to what has become a big midweek game rather than a Bank Holiday fixture.
We agreed to the switch after MK’s Good Friday game was moved because of television schedules, and we like to think MK would have done the same if the situations were reversed. It also gave our players a little extra time to recover after another long trip to Fleetwood on Friday; they have had a lot of travel in the last two weeks, with games at Plymouth, Morecambe and Fleetwood, but our Sports Science team are excellent and we will never make any excuses about tired legs affecting results.
The cold truth is that we somehow lost three games in one week at a crucial stage of the season and that meant we slipped behind. We matched Plymouth and Sunderland and had the chances to win both of those games against our rivals, and then we made so many chances at Morecambe! I watched on iFollow and could not believe how one sided that game became. So frustrating.
I hope that we started to put things right at Fleetwood on Friday, but the Easter holidays mean I have to send these notes before that game. Whether we had a positive result or not, we still need a win tonight and I am sure we are in for a very exciting game of football.
As you know, I watch every game and send a message to Karl after each one. After the Sunderland game I wrote: “It is not the end yet, keep good faith” and I meant that. How many games have we won in the last five minutes this season? How many times have you seen this team just give up? It never happens. Tonight, Saturday, the last game: they will wear the yellow shirts with pride and keep fighting until the final whistle of the season is blown, whenever that may be.
Whatever happens, it has already been an amazing season and thousands of you have returned to games and been entertained by this team. Another sold-out crowd came against Sunderland, and I thought to myself that when we first took over, we may have got crowds of 10,000 for cup games or play-off semi-finals, but not so much for regular games in the season. Now I think we will be slightly disappointed if the crowd dips below 10,000 for our last two games.
That is progress, and remember that last season our usual crowd was zero! We worried whether people would have lost their love of the game and got out of the habit of coming to watch their local football team. As usual, our fans have stayed loyal and come along in record numbers to watch this wonderful group of players. Thank you so much for that. Time for one last push from everyone.
Get behind the team,
Tiger
You can read the full programme online at www.matchdayfix.com/oufc