The wait is almost over. Oxford City will kick-off their first ever campaign in English football’s fifth tier away at Aldershot Town on Saturday.

Ever since the sensational 4-0 drubbing of St Albans in the Vanarama National League South Promotion Final, fans have had a sense of excitement, expectation, nerves and all the usual overriding feelings that run through your head before the big kick-off! 

As expected, it didn’t take long for fans and pundits to start writing the Hoops off as relegation favourites. However, the naysayers do not faze Manager Ross Jenkins.

The City boss has led the club to new heights during his time in charge and is fully focused on his side and nothing else.

“Yes, people are going to write us off.” Said Jenkins.

“I don’t care.

“It’s normal for the teams that get promoted to be written off straight away.

“Especially with the size of the club we are, it’s natural for people to write us off.

“It’s eleven versus eleven. You’ve got to beat us. We’ve got to beat you. It’s just eleven people trying to stop you from winning a game of football and we can deal with that.

“As long as we turn up and put everything we’ve practiced and learnt on the training pitch into our performance, we’ll give anyone a good game!

“There’s been a lot of work behind the scenes to get us into a good place on and off the pitch.

“Pre-season has gone really well. There have been some really competitive games and the fitness levels look really high after some minutes in the legs.

“We’re all upbeat and positive and everyone is raring to go.”

The season’s curtain-raiser against Aldershot is a tough test against a side that are going into their tenth season in the National League.

The Shots (who most fans will remember from their spell in the Football League) know the difficulties and intensity the league brings and will prove to be tough opponents at the EBB Stadium.

Furthermore, the baptism of fire continues for City as Rochdale and Chesterfield visit OX3 in the following two fixtures.

The league takes no prisoners, and nobody understands that as much at Jenkins.

“We understand the league is a difficult league, but we’ve still got to do our thing and get back to how we left off last season and continue.

“We’re not naïve, but we do need some experience and these early games will be good for us.

“We’ll learn about the league and ourselves so it’ll be a really good learning curve for us in the first part of the season.

“We’ve got to concentrate on ourselves a little bit. We’ve got to raise our standards and meet the level. Everyone has to up it by 10% and we’re all looking forward to doing that.

“Aldershot know the league inside out. Their manager is very experienced and they’ve had a lot of players come through the door and added to their squad and improving them.

“It’ll be a really competitive game.”