By Wednesday, the whole town had the name off a two-line release, and it went two ways at once, the way news does in a place that loves you.

Half of it didn’t believe the name. "Craig who?" went round the Anchor like a bad smell off the river.

"Never heard of him in my life."

"Retford? Aren’t they going bust up there?"

"Boy wonder in the dugout and he’s gone and swapped him for a fella off the telly that nobody’s ever seen on the telly."

"He’s ’aving a laugh, this lad."

And underneath that ran the gossip about me, because a town cannot abide a why it hasn’t been handed, and my two-line release hadn’t handed them one, so they built four of their own by the Thursday.

The woman in the paper shop had it off her cousin that I’d taken a job at a League club and was keeping it dark. Bald Tony, from the stool by the door, reckoned I was poorly.

"Seen the colour of him lately? Grey as a wet Monday, that lad."

One of the dockers swore blind that Sully had bought me off, which near started a row, on account of another docker taking violent exception on my behalf and having to be sat back down with a fresh pint in his fist.

And Murat, God love the boy, 19 and certain of everything, informed the entire kiosk queue that I’d come up on the lottery and was "off to Marbella with a bird," which, of the four, is the version I’d have picked off a menu.

Not one of them within a country mile of a tunnel floor, a court date, and 37,000 magic beans. Which was the whole point of a two-line release. But it is a strange, lonely thing, queuing at your own kiosk to hear a town you love invent reasons for a grief you’re not allowed to hand it.

And the other half wasn’t asking about Sadler at all. It was asking about me, quieter, and it hurt more.

An old boy stopped me outside Greggs, a man who’d stood on that terrace 60 years, and he didn’t ask who the new gaffer was. He took my arm and said, "You’re not leaving us, son. Tell me you’re not leaving us."

And I couldn’t tell him the half of it, the court, the beans, the tunnel floor, so I just said, "I’m not going anywhere, Ted. I’m going upstairs to fight for the ground you’re stood on."

And he looked at me like he half believed it, which is the most a man can ask when he can’t tell the whole truth, and I walked to my car feeling like I’d let down a man I’d never met before that morning.

Maureen didn’t say much. She never does. But she’d typed the release herself, and when she passed it me to sign she held her end a half-second too long and said, "You’re doing the right thing, Samuel.

I have watched you nearly not be here to do anything at all." Then she took her end back and told me the electric was overdue, because that is Maureen, and I could have kissed her for the both of it.

Then there was the hardest room of the lot. I called the squad in on the Thursday, the 20th, after training. All of them on the benches still steaming, studs clack on the wet tile, drip of the bad tap, Stan by the door.

I’d written out what I wanted to say. Three times. I stood in front of them with none of it in my head.

"Right," I said. "Right. So."

And then I couldn’t. I’d love to tell you I did it clean, the way a chairman should. I didn’t. I got as far as "I’m coming out of the" and my throat closed like a fist, and I had to stop and look at the ceiling of a dressing room I’d painted myself in August.

The room went very still. There is nothing on this earth more frightening to a roomful of hard men than the one who never wobbles starting to.

Stan came half a step off the door. I put a hand up. Not yet.

"I’m coming out of the dugout," I said, to the ceiling, because I couldn’t say it to their faces.

"I’m staying chairman. There’s a fight for the ground coming and it wants all of me and I can’t do both. I tried. It put me on a tunnel floor, some of you saw. So a man’s coming in to take the football. Best I’ve ever seen. Craig Sadler. You’ll not have heard of him. By April you’ll not remember a time you hadn’t."

Then I made myself look at them.

Lenny threw the rope, the way captains do. "This Sadler. He any good."

"Best I’ve ever seen. And I’ve watched you lot all season."

He nodded, once. "All right, gaffer." And the rope held, for most of them.

Baz Tucker, 35 and constitutionally unable to take news of any kind without a grievance, folded his arms.

"Marvellous, that. Drag us up the table, break your back over it, then off you trot the minute it’s comfortable. Bloody typical."

Which is Baz for I’ll miss you, and the whole room translated it right. Sid Hollis, 38 and 400-odd games of this club in his ruined knees, just said from his corner, "Leave the lad be, Baz. He’s earned the right to sit down." And that was Sid’s blessing, and it landed, because Sid’s been here longer than the paint.

Mooney wouldn’t have it so easy. Chris Mooney, who I pulled out of the bottom of a pint two seasons deep, said, thick, not looking up, "You’re not leaving us though. Not really." Not a question. A thing he needed to be told.

"I’m not leaving you, Chris. I’m going up a flight of stairs. I’ll be at every game you play till they carry me out. I’m just not going to be the one who ruins your Saturdays picking the team wrong any more."

That got a low laugh, and it helped, but not all the way.

Vardy didn’t say a word, which from Vardy is the loudest thing in any room. Forearms on his knees, eyes on the floor.

I signed him off a beer mat when nobody else would drive to Stocksbridge, and I made him a promise that day with my eyes I never said aloud, and me leaving that dugout looked, from where he sat, like the breaking of it. I’d mend that one alone. You don’t mend Vardy in a crowd.

And then Bailey. 17, hand half up like he was still sat in a classroom, and he asked it.

"Is it ’cause of us, gaffer? Did we not do enough?"

And I couldn’t.

I opened my mouth to say no, son, God, no, and nothing came out, because I knew that if I let one word go I was going in front of the lot of them.

So I stood in the middle of a dressing room I built out of bedsits and chip vans, 40 years in my head and a boy asking if he’d failed me, and I cried. Not loud. Not much. But I cried, in front of my squad, and made no move to hide it, because I couldn’t have.

It was Lenny who answered him, low, not looking at me, giving me the room to fix my face.

"It’s the opposite, son. We did too much. He’s built a thing too big for one man to carry and fight a court over at once. That’s not you failing. That’s you being so good he’s had to go and protect it."

Which was my line. The one I’d written out three times. Lenny handed it back to the boy for me while I got myself together, and I have never in my life loved a centre-half more.

"What he said," I managed, wet with it. "You’re going to be the best player in England, son. This is me making sure there’s a club still standing when you are." Too near the number. Didn’t care.

Somebody down the back, thick in the throat, said, "He better not touch the Wharf, mind," and the room broke, that terrible lovely laugh that’s half a sob, and I laughed with them, and the floor came back up under all of us.

Not a wake. A hard day. There’s a difference, and I have never felt it sharper.

Sully answered the news the same afternoon, the way he does, by moving the war onto ground I can’t chase him across.

His people put it about to the papers that the tribunal had a date now, the 14th of March, and that a "prominent local developer" was "quietly confident the historic covenant will be found no longer fit for modern purpose." Cold. Public. A man telling a whole town through a reporter’s notebook that its front room is being measured for flats.

Let him have the 14th of March. I’ll not be rich by then. But I’ll have a barrister in the room at last, and a case I built in the autumn that a fortune couldn’t improve. He’s banking on finding me broke in that hearing. He won’t find me broke. He’ll find me ready.

I drove home past the dark ground, rumble of the old engine, with a manager signed, a squad half heartbroken and half unburdened, an old boy outside Greggs who thinks I’ve deserted him, a court date, and beans three weeks from waking. And I understood there was one thing left before I climbed the stairs into a stand for good.

One game. Saturday, the 22nd, at home.

My last on the touchline. Sadler starts the Tuesday after, and the football is his from that whistle. But this Saturday is mine. The last time I’ll ever stand on the grass of the club my dad stood me at on a milk crate when I was smaller than a corner flag.

I was not going to waste a second of it.

[SYSTEM] Manager: appointed, effective Tuesday. Objective SURVIVE: handed on, by the numbers, in good hands. One fixture remains under your name. I have nothing dry to say about it. Go and have it.