The queue for Erol’s kiosk went right back past the turnstiles an hour before kickoff, and Murat had run out of Bovril twice and sent a lad to the cash and carry, and there was a television van on Marsh Road with a dish on the roof, which is not a thing this ground has ever had, parked where the coal lorry used to turn.

A woman with a microphone and cold ankles was doing a piece to camera under the leaning white T. "...the twenty-four-year-old chairman and manager who dragged this fifth-tier club off the bottom, taking charge for the final time this afternoon..."

I walked behind her shot on purpose so my mum, if she had it on, would see the top of my head. Petty. Human. I’d do it again.

3,100 came.

A gate we’d not seen since the cup, breath going up off the packed terraces like the whole ground was quietly burning. Somebody had hung a bedsheet over the Bovril End, THANKS GAFFER, except the H had come out too small and it read THANKS GAFER, and I loved it more than if a signwriter had done it.

Ted, the old boy who took my arm outside Greggs, was under it in a scarf that hasn’t seen daylight since 1996, and when he saw me cross the pitch he didn’t wave, he just put his fist on his heart and left it there, and I had to look at my boots.

Under that banner, on the exact stretch of cold concrete my dad once stood me on a milk crate and said watch the space, son, the dockers were three deep and already loud.

"BILL’S BOY! GO ON, BILL’S BOY!"

Nobody planned that. It just went up, off one throat and then forty, and it followed me the whole length of the touchline, and if you have never had a town shout your dead father’s name at you as a kindness then I cannot explain to you what it does to the backs of your knees.

I got in the boot room and shut the door, because there was a thing to do and you don’t do it in a crowd.

"Jamie." Vardy looked up from his laces. Two days he’d not spoken to me. "The afternoon I drove to Stocksbridge. You know what I saw."

"A lad off a beer mat."

"You already know what I saw. I’ve not changed my mind about a word of it, and I’ll be in that stand the day it comes true, and it’s coming true. I promised you with my face the first afternoon. I’m promising it with my mouth now. So pack in the sulk and win me my last one."

He didn’t answer. He never does. He stood, gripped the back of my neck once, hard, the way I doubt his own dad ever did, and walked out to the noise. That’s Vardy for a speech.

[TILBROOK TOWN · THE LAST TEAM SHEET · 4-1-4-1] Sid Hollis Baz Tucker · Lenny Marsh (c) · Robbie Doyle · the Crayford kid Cal Murphy Chris Mooney · the new dad · Aiden Reece · Bailey Quinn Jamie Vardy Every one of them mine. For 90 more minutes.

Sadler watched from the back of the stand, same coat, no hat, an envelope on his knee he was writing on, learning the men who’d be his on Tuesday. I caught his eye the once. He gave me nothing, which is a man refusing to want another fella’s team out loud while the fella’s still stood in front of it. Dead right.

Then, peep, and I was in my technical area for the last time in my life, and the noise came down off the terraces like a lid, and Crawley kicked off.

They were the runaway leaders, the money side, a wage bill you’d run three of us on, and for 20 minutes they showed us why. One move, four passes, a centre-forward who cost more than our main stand, and he took it round Sid before Sid could set himself, thwock, side-netting from the wrong angle, filthy. 1-0. Their 200 in the corner had a song ready.

"YOU’RE JUST A SHOP, YOU’RE JUST A SHOP, CRAW-LEY."

And it stung, because it half rhymed with the truth, and our lot went quiet, the way a crowd goes quiet when it’s frightened the fairy tale’s got the wrong ending on its last page.

I didn’t rant. My final act on that grass was not going to be a tantrum in front of my dad’s terrace. I walked to the edge of my box, the way a man in no hat had shown me a fortnight back, waited for a break, and moved Cal Murphy five yards to the right and shouted six words at Bailey that only he could use.

And the game changed its mind about us.

On 38 minutes Aiden Reece dropped off the front and took it on the half-turn with a man on his back, and did the thing only he can, killed it dead and rolled his hips and the man went to a shop that was shut.

He looked up. Bailey was already moving, and Aiden slid it into the one blade of grass Bailey was running onto.

Bailey took one touch to open his body and hung a cross on the far post with that left foot the whole ground holds its breath for, and Vardy came off the back of the last defender the way he’s come off it all season, and didn’t head it, nodded it, placed it, rrrip, inside the post.

1-1.

Marsh Road did not cheer. It detonated. roar of it going down through the studs of my boots into the frozen ground, and the barge bell came apart, DONG-DONG-DONG, and Maureen was up in the directors’ box with both fists over her head and her glasses on a chain swinging, and Stan had both arms in the air on the bench, and Ted under the banner was being held up by two dockers.

"COME ON YOU DOCKERS!"

"FOR THE GAFFER! ONE FOR THE GAFFER, LADS!"

And now they played.

Baz Tucker at right-back, 35 and constitutionally furious, moaned his way through the half and won every header a foot over his grey head, roaring at Bailey to track back and at me for putting him there.

Lenny read Crawley’s clever ball two passes early, the way he reads the world, and stepped across their striker like a man collecting his own post, thd. Doyle defended and coached in one breath, "SQUEEZE, we squeeze, Pete’s not on yet."

The Crayford kid, who in September shook reversing a car, stood their winger up and put him flat into the hoardings, crunch, under Hubble the undertaker’s board, and the Bovril End roared the joke it’s roared all year.

"HE’S MEASURED HIM UP, DEREK!"

Half-time, and I said next to nothing, because the day was saying it louder than I could. Sixteen men steaming on the benches, and Lenny stood at the end of it, our captain, our scaffolder, three kids and a bad back, and said four words. "One more. For him." That was the team talk. It beat every one I ever gave.