Chapter 227: The Book Opens I

The storm I had watched coming down the fixture list arrived on a grey Saturday in October, and it did not announce itself. It just stopped us winning.

One win in 7 league games. That was the line by the time Stevenage came to Marsh Road, and it is a cold line to read on a Monday when you have promised a town 17th and a future.

"You have gone quiet on me these last 3 weeks," Maureen said, sitting down beside me in the directors’ box, the green book nowhere in sight, which is how I knew she had come to watch and to worry and not to work. "That is new. You are never quiet."

"I am thinking."

"You are fretting. I have known you 2 years and I have watched you turn down 3 million pounds without a flicker. I have never watched you fret." She folded her hands. "It frightens me more than the table does."

I did not answer her, because the true answer was one I could not give.

The table frightened her because she could read it. It frightened me for a reason she could not.

I knew, the way I know few things, that the side down there on Kieran’s grass was going to be remembered for 30 years. What I did not know, what no living soul could tell me, was whether it would still be a League One side by the time the world found out.

Knowing the ending buys you nothing when you cannot see the road to it. I had spent a summer certain. I sat in the box that afternoon as blind and as frightened as any chairman of any small club sliding the wrong way in October, and the certainty was no coat against it.

Stevenage were not a good side. I want to be plain about that, because it is the whole of what October teaches you. They were an organised side, a drilled side, a side that had looked at us and written down exactly how to take what we did away from us.

They sat 2 banks of 4 on the edge of their own box and dared us to be clever. They put a man on Kanté so he could not turn.

They kicked Mahrez early and often and dared the referee to care. crunch, and the boy up off the grass again. And they left their big striker up alone, waiting for the one long ball or the one set-piece a young defence gives you in the end.

PEEP. The whistle went, and 3,000 came, which is 1,000 fewer than August, and the missing 1,000 was the whole story before a ball was kicked.

For half an hour we had all the ball and none of the game.

Reece knocked it side to side across the front of their 2 banks. Mahrez got it wide and their full-back and their winger doubled him and put him down. thud. A free kick given, and nothing done with it, and the boy looking for a referee who had already turned away.

Gray drove the only shot we managed all half from 25 yards. It took a deflection and looped wide. thwack, a groan out of 3,000, and the drum tried to lift it. boom, boom, boom-boom-boom.

At the other end their big man won everything that dropped. thud of him backing into the loan boy, a knockdown, a scramble their winger lashed over the top. Braithwaite watched it go and blew out his cheeks.

"COME ON YOU AM-BERS," the Bovril End tried, early and hopeful. It came out thinner than it used to. boom, boom.ding-ding-ding of Bald Tony’s bell, working harder for less.

"They have set up not to lose," Maureen said. "Even I can see that."

"They have set up to beat us, Maureen. There is a difference, and it is the difference that is going to hurt."

Kanté won it and gave it and got it back and found no one to give it to, because the room the summer had made for Mahrez and Vardy was gone. smack of him into another tackle, up, chasing again, a one-man argument against the whole afternoon.

Every side in the division had watched the tape now. The tape said sit deep, foul the winger, starve the striker, and wait.

Maguire brought it out from the back the way he does, calm, 19 going on 30, and there was simply nowhere to play it.

He looked up 3 times and put it back to Braithwaite twice. murmur turning sour, and the terrace, which had sung his name in August, made a low sound with a boo somewhere in it.

"That is new an all," Maureen murmured.

Then, on 38 minutes, the one thing a deep block needs happened, and it happened at our end.

A long clearance, a flick, their big striker holding it up against the loan boy, who was 20 and honest and half a yard short of a man that size. He laid it back.

Their midfielder hit it first time from 20 yards, low through a crowd, and it went in off the base of the post before Braithwaite could see it through the legs. crack. 0-1.

Marsh Road did not roar, because it was the wrong end. It made the sound of 3,000 people who had feared exactly this all week and now had it, sitting in their laps, cold.

The away corner, 200 of them, sang the song every away end sings to a sliding home side. "IS THIS THE LI-BRARY. IS THIS THE LI-BRA-RY." boom-boom-boom.

"He was shielding it," I said, watching the loan boy jog back with his head down. "He did everything but win a header he was never going to win. That is not the boy’s fault."

"Whose is it, then."

"Marsh’s absence, and Marsh’s absence is October’s. There is nothing in it we did not know was a risk when we chose to save our money."

"You are very calm about a goal that has us second bottom by teatime if the results go wrong."

"I am not calm, Maureen. I am holding still. They are 2 different things, and holding still is the only one of them I get to choose today."

PEEP-PEEP. Half-time came at 0-1, and the boos that met it were the first of the day, scattered and disbelieving, from a crowd that had cheered this same side up a division 5 months before.

Sadler did not change it at half-time. That takes a kind of nerve people never credit, the nerve to do nothing when doing something would look like caring.

He moved 2 men 5 yards and sent them out again, same shape, same plan, and I loved him for it and could not tell him so.

The second half was worse, because the second half was hope.

We threw everything we had at 2 banks of 4. Gray came on for legs. Reece got on the ball higher.

And every time we committed men, they broke. Their winger got away once, 2 on 1, and Braithwaite stood up big and smothered it at his feet. SLAP. The relief was louder than anything the football had given us.

The boy came alive in the last of it, the one they were all really watching, whether they knew it or not.

Quinn, 17, dropped into the half-space and started to find the passes that were not there before. He slid one through for Gray that should have been the equaliser.

Gray dragged it wide, and the boy stood with his hands on his head and learned, in front of 3,000, what it is to make the right thing happen and get nothing for it.

"That is the best player on the pitch by a distance," Maureen said, "and he cannot drive at 17."

"No. And Craig is going to have to lean on him anyway, because we are that thin. That is the thing that keeps me awake." I watched the boy chase back, willing, tireless, too young for the weight of it.

"You do not put a season like this on a boy that age if you have a choice. We do not have a choice. That is what a bad run costs you, Maureen. It spends the ones you meant to save."

On 71 minutes they killed it, and they killed it off a corner, which is how the drilled sides kill the young ones.

A near-post flick, a run our kid did not track because nobody had taught him to yet, a header back across goal. thud. 0-2.

The big striker wheeled away to the 200 in the corner. "YOU’RE JUST A SMALL TOWN IN ES-SEX," they sang, and Marsh Road turned.

Not all at once. It turns like milk, a home crowd, slow and then all at once and then it cannot be put back.

"SORT IT OUT," a voice bawled from the Bovril End, raw, and it was not aimed at the players. It was aimed at the tunnel, and past the tunnel, at me. "SORT IT OUT, MERCER."

Then the boos, when Sadler made a change and the number that came up was a defender for a forward with 20 minutes left and 2 goals needed. jeer rolling round 3 sides of a ground that had stood and sung under its new roof 8 weeks before.

Down the front, Ted Cutler stood in his 1996 scarf and did not boo. He never has, not in 60 years.

He caught my eye across the heads and gave me a small nod, the way you nod at a man carrying something heavy, then turned back and clapped the young ones who could not hear it over the anger.

One old man against 3,000. It was worth something. It was also not enough to hold a town up on its own, and both of us knew it.

"They are booing a substitution," Maureen said, and her voice had gone tight. "In October. After the summer you gave them."

"They are frightened. Frightened people boo the nearest thing. Today the nearest thing is us." I kept my hands still on the rail. "Let them. It is theirs to do."

Vardy pulled one back on 84 minutes, because Vardy pulls one back, a scrap off a knockdown bundled in from 6 yards. thwack. 1-2.

He did not celebrate. He pointed once at the sky, fished the ball out, and carried it back to the halfway line at a sprint. For 4 minutes the old belief flickered, and the Bovril End remembered how to make a noise. "COME ON YOU AM-BERS," STAMP of feet on the boards.

It died on the whistle. PEEP-PEEP-PEEP. Tilbrook 1, Stevenage 2. One win in 8.