The clubhouse Portakabin had a small bar at one end with three pumps on it and a fruit machine in the corner that had not worked since 2003.

The barman, a heavy bald lad in a Stocksbridge polo shirt with DAVE stitched on the chest, was watching the cricket on a tinny portable behind the bar with the sound down. He clocked me come in with one eye and went back to the cricket.

The number nine was off the pitch and at a table at the back, with two of his teammates. One was a tall lad with a black eye in some shape from earlier in the friendly. The other was a small wiry one with a wedding ring on the wrong hand and a half of bitter. The number nine had a pint of lager top in front of him.

I went up. Raj stayed by the door with a look on his face that had finally decided to enjoy itself.

"Jamie."

"...Yeah."

"Sam Mercer. I’m the chairman of a football club down in Essex. I want to sign you."

He looked at me.

He looked at the lad with the black eye.

The lad with the black eye looked at the lad with the wedding ring.

"...Lads. Have a word."

The lad with the black eye stood up slowly the way you stand up slowly when you have got a black eye. The lad with the wedding ring picked up his half of bitter and followed him over to the fruit machine.

I sat down opposite the number nine.

"Tilbrook Town, Jamie. National League. Just out of administration. Ten-point deduction, you might have read about it in the paper this week. We start the season Saturday the fourteenth of August. Home tie. AFC Wimbledon."

"...I read about that."

"Then you know who I am."

I got the beer mat out of my inside pocket. I put it on the table between us, blank side up, tk. I put the biro down next to it. I turned the beer mat over.

Fifteen per cent of any future transfer fee paid by a Football League club for the registration of J. Vardy is hereby acknowledged, payable on a 50/50 split between J. Vardy and Tilbrook Town F.C., subject to formal contract drafted by E. Carbery, signed S. Mercer / J. Vardy, this 30th day of July 2010.

The two lads at the table read it.

The two lads at the table looked at each other.

The number nine, twenty-three years old, in a borrowed kit, on a council pitch at the back of an estate outside Sheffield, who had been told no by every academy in the north of England, read it once.

He read it again.

He picked the biro up.

"Fifteen per cent."

"Fifteen per cent on any future Football League transfer. Split fifty-fifty with you and the club. Carbery cleared it. It is on the right side of the FA’s player registration rulebook of 1971 as amended."

"...The what."

"Sign the beer mat, Jamie."

He signed the beer mat. Scratch. He signed it J. Vardy in the hand of a man who had been signing J. Vardy on the back of Stocksbridge team sheets all season. I signed under him, S. Mercer. I dated it. I picked the beer mat up off the table and put it in the inside pocket of my jacket where the trade confirmation slip from the BP shares had been sat all week.

"Right then, Jamie. The proper contract, Maureen Tully will ring you Sunday afternoon. She is our club secretary. Hockey stick on the desk for emergencies. Be polite, she has run the office longer than you have been alive. Medical on Monday morning. Registration in by Tuesday lunchtime. Train with the lads at Marsh Road Tuesday evening. Lift down to Essex on Tuesday morning, I’ll send Raj for you."

"...Send Raj for me."

"Raj is the lad at the door."

Raj raised one hand at the door without taking the other out of his pocket.

"...All right, Sam."

I shook his hand. He had a grip on him you do not get working a splints factory. He had it off lifting bags of something somewhere at the wrong end of his teenage years.

I went and got Raj. We were back in the Astra and pulling out of the council pitch at Stocksbridge Park Steels at quarter past one in the afternoon of Friday the thirtieth of July 2010, with one Jamie Vardy on a Tetley’s beer mat in the inside pocket of my jacket.

Raj did not speak for ten minutes of the M1 South. He just gripped the wheel.

Then he started laughing.

He laughed quietly at first. Then he laughed properly. Then he laughed the way a minicab driver laughs when his best mate has just signed a number nine on a Tetley’s beer mat at the back of a Portakabin off a council pitch in Stocksbridge.

"You absolute lunatic."

"Eat your apple, Raj."

"You absolute, all the way home, lunatic. I love you. I am going to ring my ma."

"Don’t ring your ma."

"I am going to ring my ma."

"Don’t ring your ma."

"I am going to ring my ma. Reluctantly. I am going to ring her at Watford Gap southbound and I am going to tell her what just happened in that Portakabin, and then she is going to ring my Auntie Sumitra, who is going to ring her sister in Slough, who is going to ring her son in Toronto, and by Tuesday morning, Sam, the whole of Toronto is going to know."

I leaned my head back against the seat and looked out at the country going past at the wrong speed for an Astra of that age.

Bill Mercer had driven me up this same motorway in a Cortina in 1992 to watch Tilbrook play out a goalless draw at Scunthorpe in the rain. He had not said much on the way up. He had not said much on the way back. He had bought us both a Wagon Wheel at the next services and not said anything about that either.

PROUD AS OWT, in his blocky biro capitals in a scrapbook in a shoebox in the back of a wardrobe in a flat above a kebab shop on Carling Street.

"...Sam."

"Yeah, Raj."

"You all right, mate."

"I’m all right, Raj."

"You went quiet for a minute there. Quieter than I am used to. I do not, I am telling you now, want to have to drive back to Sheffield this Friday."

"Eat your apple, Raj."

He ate his apple.

The Nokia rang on the seat between us at four minutes past five, somewhere on the M1 South between Northampton and Newport Pagnell, with a Halifax 01422 area code I did not recognise.

I picked it up.

"Mercer."

A man’s voice. North country. Older. The kind of voice you hear at the back of a Sunday-morning park pitch coaching the under-tens.

"Is that Mr Mercer of Tilbrook Town Football Club."

"It is."

"Right. Right. Bit awkward, this, Mr Mercer. I have just been on the phone to a lad I was, I’ll be honest, intending to invite up here to Halifax for a trial next week. Lad by the name of Vardy. Stocksbridge Park Steels. He has told me, just now, that he signed for you this lunchtime. On a beer mat. Is that information accurate."

"That information is accurate, sir."

"...On a beer mat."

"On a Tetley’s, sir."

The silence at the other end was the silence of a small wiry man in a Halifax Town tracksuit looking out of an office window at a training pitch, working out how angry to be with himself.

"...Right. Mr Mercer."

"Yes, sir."

"You look after the lad."

"I will, sir."

"Have a good season."

"You too, sir."

He hung up.

Raj looked at me sideways.

"...Who."

"The man who was going to sign Jamie Vardy on Monday, Raj."

Raj drove a quarter mile not saying anything.

"...You absolute LUNATIC, Sam."

"Eyes on the road, mate."

"Eyes on the road, mate."

Erol was just shutting up the hatch on Carling Street at twenty-five past nine when the Astra pulled in.

"Samuel. You look like a man who has been to Sheffield."

"I have been to Sheffield, Erol."

"Saveloy?"

"Saveloy, mate."

"And Rajesh." He leaned past me to look at Raj behind the wheel. "Rajesh, you look like a man who has been to Sheffield with a man who has been to Sheffield."

"Erol. I am too tired to laugh."

"You. House. Saveloy. Chip butty for your mother in foil. Out of my hatch in five minutes please, I have a Newsnight at ten and a woman I have not seen since Tuesday in the flat upstairs."

He fried, sizzle, hsss, click. He came round with the two saveloys on two paper plates and a chip butty wrapped in foil for Mrs Sandhu, and he put a hand on my shoulder.

"Samuel."

"Erol."

"You did all right today."

"...How do you know."

"Forty years on a hatch on Carling Street, son, you learn the smell of a Friday a man has done all right on. Off you go. Eat. Sleep."

"Cheers, Erol."

"On the house."

Raj ate his saveloy at the wheel.

I ate mine standing in Erol’s doorway.

He hung the closed sign at the hatch at twenty to ten and went upstairs. Raj drove off back round the corner with the chip butty for his mother in foil on the passenger seat where I had been sat all day.

I went up to the flat.

I sat at the kitchen table.

The FA letter was still where I had laid it on the Monday night. The receipt was next to it. PROUD AS OWT across the top. 13 on the back. Six items down the front. Item four underlined twice.

I took the Tetley’s beer mat out of my inside pocket. I laid it next to the receipt, J. Vardy and S. Mercer up.

I picked the biro up off the Formica.

I crossed item four off the front of the receipt with a single careful line.

I turned the receipt over.

Under the 13, I started a second list.

I did not, on this list, underline anything yet. The second list was a list a man wrote on the back of a receipt at five to ten on a Friday night when he had got the first list down to five out of six. Item four was item four. The other five were still on the front of the receipt waiting on me. The second list was for the long thing after that.

The system pinged. Soft. White. In the corner of my eye.

[SYSTEM] A striker on a beer mat, Samuel. From above a Greggs.

"From above a Greggs."

I put the biro down.

Bed.