Chapter 223: When The Points Go Up I

Raj drove me to Shorehaven on the Saturday, 3rd in a convoy behind Bald Tony’s van and the supporters’ coach, and he did not say a sensible word the whole way.

"You should let me come up in the posh box with you," he said at the lights. "I have got a collar on. Look." flap of him tugging a shirt collar out from under his jumper.

"You are in the away end with the town, Raj. Where the singing is."

"Where the heartbreak is, you mean." He pulled off. "8 quid they want for a pie in that ground. 8 quid. I looked it up on the way to yours."

Shorehaven came up out of the marsh road like something dropped from a catalogue, all glass and blue cladding and a car park the size of our whole town. Sully had built it in 3 years on other people’s borrowed faith, and it gleamed.

Behind it, in a corner that held maybe 900 of us, the amber had come. Not many, up against 12,000 of his. But they had come an hour up the road on a Saturday to sing at a wall of money, and the noise was already going.

"COME ON YOU AM-BERS," drifted over the car park, ragged and small and stubborn. boom of the drum under it.

Raj wound the window down to hear it, and I watched a grown man’s eyes go bright at a chant he had sung his whole life.

"Whatever happens in there," he said, "we are not them. Remember that when it hurts."

"I will remember it, Raj."

I could not tell him that I remembered it in a way he never could. I did not know the score. No man in that car park did.

I knew the shape of the years, though, and the years did not belong to the men with the glass ground. That was a thing I carried into every away box, and could set down for no one.

Sully met me in the tunnel that led up to the box, and he had a hand out and a smile on before I was through the door.

"Sam." Warm as ever, quiet as ever, the handshake a half-second too long. "Welcome to a real football club."

"It is a lovely ground, Ray."

"It is a lovely everything." He walked me up, a hand at my shoulder like a host at a wedding. "Training pitches with heat under them. A gym a Premier League side would take. I spent what your whole club is worth on the room where my players eat their lunch."

"You spent it well."

"I spent it to win." We came out into the box, glass and leather and a spread of food nobody would eat. "You turned down 3 million for a striker in June and came here 11th."

"We did."

"So sit up here in the warm, and watch what that 3 million does to a side that had to make do without it."

Priya was already in the seat beside mine, and she did not stand for him.

"He is trying to get in your head before kickoff," she said, low, when he had gone to work the room. "It means he is worried about something. Men that far ahead do not bother."

"He is worried, Priya. He would not say a word if he was not."

I looked out at the pitch, and down to my left at the amber corner, small and loud, and I weighed the 2 of us the way only I could.

Sully had bought a squad. I had bought time, in a currency he did not know was a currency, and I had a great deal more of it than he did.

THE TWO TEAMSHEETS · what each side cost Shorehaven, back to front, a chairman’s chequebook: the 4 and a half million pound striker, a 7-figure midfield, full-backs off the Championship on a wage our whole XI could not dream of. Add it up and you have more than 15 million pounds standing on one pitch. Tilbrook: a keeper off our own estate. A ball-winner out of a French 3rd division for a wet Tuesday’s takings. A winger off a reserve team. A boy at the back whose fee we found down the side of the sofa. Add it up and it does not trouble a million. What the market says today: 15 million beats not-a-million, and it will be proved right this afternoon. What only I can add, and will never write down: which of these 22 names the world pays a fortune for before long, and which it forgets. The column that matters is not the one on the programme. It never is.

The whistle went, and the money came at us like it had somewhere to be.

PEEP. And then the roar of 12,000, and the small defiant answer of 900, and Sully’s expensive side moving the ball the way you move it when nobody has ever told you no.

Their striker was everything the fee said he was. He pulled off Maguire early, found the pockets, held it up with his back to goal and brought the runners in. Maguire was 19 and leading a back line without its captain, and you could see him learning the man in real time.

thud of a shoulder into the boy, a whistle, nothing given. Kanté flew across to cover, smack, and dug the loose ball out before their runner had settled.

"GET IN-TO ’EM," bawled the 900, and Bald Tony’s bell went ding-ding-ding over the top of the home crowd.

"COME ON YOU MON-EY," the home end sang, pleased with itself. boom-boom. "SPEND A BIT MORE, SPEND A BIT MORE."

On 22 minutes the money did what money does. A ball inside Pett, the striker peeling off Maguire’s shoulder, one touch and a finish across Braithwaite before the boy could set. thwack. 1-0.

The glass ground shook, ROAR rolling down off all 3 sides at once. "WHO NEEDS A HIS-TO-RY," they sang down at our corner, "WHEN YOU’VE GOT THE CASH." boom, boom, boom-boom-boom.

Our 900 did not go quiet. That is the thing about a town that has been poor a long time. It knows how to keep singing when the scoreboard has stopped being kind.

"AM-BER AR-MY," came back up out of the corner, louder for being hurt. Raj was down there in the middle of it, I knew, with his 8-pound pie and his bright eyes.

"He got in behind Maguire too easy," Priya said.

"He is 19, playing a 4 and a half million pound man, without Marsh at his side for the first time in his life." I watched the boy jog back, jaw set, already talking to Prentice. "Watch him. He learns a thing once. That one is filed now."

Sully did not celebrate the goal. He was too clever for that with me sat 2 seats away. He just wrote something in a little book, the way I write in mine, and I wondered for a moment what a man like that thinks he is keeping score of.

Sadler was down on the touchline in the cold, arms folded, not chasing it. He had told them in the week that the money scores early because it can, and that the game is 90 minutes long and expensive legs get heavy. He was letting the first storm blow through.

Shorehaven smelled a second, and they came in waves. The expensive full-backs bombed on, the striker pulled us all over the pitch. thud of a shot charged down, a scramble in our box, a clearance off Prentice’s shin and behind for a corner.

Maguire threw his head at everything that came near it, roaring the line up, hauling Rudd back into shape by the shirt. The boy was holding a wall together with his voice and his forehead, and the wall was holding.

"COME ON YOU TOWN," the 900 sang into the teeth of it, and the boy at the back heard it, clapped his hands once, and set them again.

Braithwaite kept us in it on the half-hour. The striker again, turned Prentice this time, low and hard to the far post, and Tom got down and across and shovelled it wide. SLAP. Away and safe.

"BRAITH. WAITE," roared the 900, and the boy who was not a future England keeper punched the air at his own town.

Half-time came at 1-0, and it felt like more, and the amber went for its overpriced tea talking itself into the second half the way our town always does.

Down in the tunnel mouth Sadler had them in a tight knot, no arms waving, saying the one thing he had promised me he would say. Ride the money out, hold the shape, and wait for their dear legs to remember what a first half costs.

"They are better than us," Priya said. It was not a question.

"They are dearer than us. Watch what my 3 do in the middle 20 minutes of this half, when their expensive legs have done a first shift they are not used to."

She looked at me the way they all look at me. I said no more. I could not tell her I had seen my 3 do it on grander stages than this glass box, in a run of years that only lived in me now.

On 64 minutes, the thing I had built to happen happened, and it happened to a side that cost 15 times what it cost.

Kanté won it in the centre circle, the way he wins everything, stepping across their tired midfielder before the man knew the ball was gone. smack. He gave it to Reece. Reece gave it to Mahrez.

And Mahrez, who had been kicked and crowded and quiet for an hour, got a yard for the first time all day and remembered what he was. He went at their expensive full-back, dropped the shoulder, and was gone.

The byline, the cutback, low and hard into the place a striker lives. Vardy had gone half a second early, the way he always does, and he did not miss those. thwack. 1-1.