On the way back I let myself into Marsh Road and walked out to the middle of the frozen pitch and stood on it, which is not a thing I usually do in daylight.

Crunch of the white grass under my boots. Breath going up in front of me.

The leaning T holding the grey off the Main Stand the way it has since before I was born. Twelve acres. A hundred years of a town coming here on a Saturday to put the week down for a bit.

My dad’s ashes aren’t here. I’ve never been told where they are and I’ve stopped asking. But two men’s are, by the penalty spot, and my dad stood me on a milk crate in that corner over there when I was smaller than a corner flag and told me to watch the space.

Caw went a gull off the barge works, wheeling out over the river, and I stood in it till my ears ached and made myself a promise I’m not writing down either, and then I went back to work.

I didn’t have to carry it on my own, as it turned out.

By the Thursday, the town knew, because you cannot keep a cream envelope quiet in a place this size. The trust met in the clubhouse and near 200 of them came out on a freezing night, scrape of chairs on the lino, breath fogging the glass. Bald Tony got up with his cap in his two hands and said, "Right. What do we do, and who do we hit?" Half the room laughed. The other half meant it.

I told them the truth: it goes to a court, not a car park, and the best thing 500 names can do is the exact thing they were signed to do, stand up and prove this grass is used and loved and theirs.

"You’ll have every one of us," said a docker near the back, "and our money, and our mouths. Patience you’ll have to sort out with the wife." Laughter, warm, the whole room, breath and all.

That is the thing Sully has never understood about the field he wants. He costed the land. He never costed the room.

Except he had. He rang me himself the next morning, which told me he’d heard about the meeting before the chairs were stacked.

"Sam." The voice you’d trust to sell you a house. "I’ll not keep you. I hear you had the town in. Signing things, singing songs. Genuinely, it was a lovely thing to hear about. Your dad would have been down the front."

"He would."

"I’m going to say this the once, as a courtesy, because I don’t enjoy the other way." A pause, unhurried, a man with all the time in the world and a diary that proves it.

"A room full of good people is a beautiful thing. It is not a defence. I’ve sat across a tribunal from 3 of them. Sentiment doesn’t get a seat on the bench, son. The law does, and the law’s had a hundred years to move on from a widow’s good intentions."

Tick went my pen on the desk. The only thing I let him hear.

"So here’s the kindness," he went on.

"Let me buy it now. A fair number. More than it’s worth, before a barrister you can’t afford eats the difference and you lose the lot with 500 signatures to show for it. Walk away the man who got a dying club a windfall. I’ll keep the name on a stand for you. The Mercer Stand. Your dad on the wall where he stood you."

I let that sit long enough that he’d think it had gone in.

"Ray. You costed this land 15 years ago and you’ve been right about the number every day since." I stood up while I said it, I don’t know why, you just do. "You’re about to be wrong about one thing, and I’m going to enjoy being in the room when you find out which. Have a lovely January."

I put it down before he could make it civil again. Civil was his weapon. I wasn’t handing it back.

My hand wasn’t quite steady on the receiver, and I’ll be honest about that, because I’ve been honest about the rest. A reasonable man, patient, holding out a fair price and your dead father’s name across a desk, is far harder to tell no than a cartoon in a black hat would be. For about a second he had me wanting to thank him.

Then I looked out at the leaning T holding the sky off the Bovril End, and I stopped.

The best answer to a man like that was never going to be in a courtroom anyway. It was on the grass, that Saturday, and the grass looked after itself, which was the whole point and still landed like a small bereavement.

More than looked after itself. It had gone the guts of two months without its best player and kept winning regardless.

Vardy had pulled up holding the back of his leg at Kettering in November, and you didn’t need the System to read that face, torn hamstring, eight weeks in a tracksuit, and the team had shrugged and found the goals off Mooney and Bailey and Big Pete’s forehead in the meantime while he sat in the stand doing my head in. Which told me something I both wanted and didn’t want to know.

He came back that Saturday. First start in two months, and of course he scored, of course he did, because that is what the man is for and I am the only one at this club who knows quite how much.

I barely saw it. I was in the mouth of the tunnel at the half with a finger in one ear against the noise, roar coming up the concrete, on the phone to Carbery’s clerk while Doyle ran the changes and Stan ran the line.

A header Cal had no business winning, three passes, Vardy peeling off the last man the way only he does, thwock, net, the barge bell going daft, DONG-DONG, and 900 frozen souls roaring a name they’d missed. 1-0. I heard it more than I saw it, and clapped them off with a warm phone still in my hand.

Lenny caught my eye on the way past with a nod that said he’d worked most of it out already. Captains always know first. They just don’t say.

That night I rang my mum. Nothing about tribunals. Asked after her chest the way I do now, casual as I can get it, which is not very. Told her I’d be round with a proper bit of news next month, once a thing came through.

"What thing," she said, and I said, "A good thing, Mum, leave it," and she let me, because she has spent her whole life letting people leave things, and afterwards I sat on my own settee with the phone in my hand and did the sum I don’t say out loud, the one with her mortgage in it. This time it came out payable. February. It all came out February.

A fortnight to get from here to there. A tribunal to arm. A squad to hand over. And a man to go and fetch, quietly, before the town worked out I’d chosen him weeks ago on a motorway.

On the Tuesday I put my coat on in front of Maureen and she said, "Where are you off to on a Tuesday night in January?"

"To watch a game."

"You don’t watch games you’re not in. Not unless you’re after somebody."

"That’s right," I said, and did up the buttons, one, two, and said nothing else, and she watched me the whole way to the door with her pen stopped over her book.

The game I was driving to was a world away from anything you’d call scouting, a Tuesday-night nothing under poor lights, the sort of fixture a man only turns out for if he already knows exactly what he’s going to see. I knew.

I’d known for a fortnight. I put the address in and pulled out onto the dark road with the heater ticking, tick, tick, and my hands steady on the wheel, and I’ll be honest with you, I hadn’t felt like this on the way to a match since I was a boy. That thing in the gut that isn’t nerves. The one that’s closer to hope.

[SYSTEM] SURVIVE: effectively secured. The new front is a courtroom, not a table. I cannot score it, cost it, or see the end of it. Not my department. Go. I’ll mind the football while you’re out.

I turned the collar up against the cold and went to get him.

The man the game threw away. The man I’m about to hand a hundred years.