Chapter 78: The Final Push III

After the match, Terry handed me another hundred pounds. “Four wins,” he said. “Keep it up, Danny. Keep it up.” I nodded. I was exhausted. I had not slept more than four hours a night in two weeks. My body ached. My eyes burned. But we were winning. That was all that mattered.

That night at the store, I fell asleep standing up. I woke up when a customer asked for lottery tickets. I had been asleep for maybe thirty seconds, leaning against the cigarette display. The customer did not seem to notice. Or maybe he did and was just being polite. I served him, then went to the back room and splashed cold water on my face. Two more games. Just two more games. I could do this.

The fifth game was on Saturday, March 6th, away to Glossop North End, who were already relegated and had nothing to play for. The system’s analysis showed a team that had given up, a team that was already on its summer holidays.

I expected an easy game. I was wrong. Glossop played with freedom, with abandon, with nothing to lose. They pressed high, they took risks, they played with a joy that we, weighed down by the pressure of the promotion race, could not match. And in the fifty-sixth minute, they scored. A long-range shot that took a wicked deflection and looped over our goalkeeper’s head. 1-0 down. The dream was dying.

I made changes. I brought on fresh legs. I pushed everyone forward. I told the team to forget about tactics, forget about shape, just go and win the game. “Throw everything at them,” I said.

“Everything.” In the seventy-third minute, JJ picked up the ball on the edge of the box. He was surrounded by three defenders.

He somehow wriggled through them, creating just enough space to get a shot away. The ball flew into the bottom corner. 1-1. In the eighty-eighth minute, we won a free kick thirty yards from goal.

JJ stood over it. I had seen him practice these a thousand times in training. He hit it perfectly. The ball curled over the wall, dipped at the last second, and nestled into the top corner. The goalkeeper was rooted to the spot. 2-1. When the final whistle blew, I sank to my knees. JJ had saved us. Again.

I did not go to the convenience store that night. I could not. I was physically and emotionally spent. I called in sick for the first time in three years.

My manager was not happy, but I did not care. I went home, collapsed into bed, and slept for fourteen hours straight. When I woke up, I had six missed calls from Terry and a text from Emma: “Still alive?” I texted back: “Barely.”

The sixth and final game before the final day was on Tuesday, March 9th, away to Curzon Ashton, a team we respected, a team we had battled with all season. The match was played in a spirit of mutual respect.

Both teams played good, honest football. No cynicism. No gamesmanship. Just two teams giving everything for the love of the game. We were the better team. We were fitter, sharper, more motivated.

We scored in the twenty-eighth minute a counter-attack finished by JJ. We scored again in the sixty-first minute a long-range effort from Marcus Chen that flew into the top corner. 2-0. Six games. Six wins. We had done everything we could possibly do.

After the Curzon match, I sat alone in the away changing room, staring at my phone. The Salford result had just come in.

They had won. Again. They had won all six of their games too. We were still three points behind them. It all came down to the final day. Saturday, March 13th. We were playing away against a mid-table team with nothing to play for. Salford were playing at home against a team that was already relegated. We had to win. And we had to hope for a miracle.

Emma found me sitting there, staring into space. She sat down next to me, not saying anything. After a long silence, she spoke. “You’ve done everything right,” she said. “The tactics. The man-management. The decisions. You’ve been brilliant.”

“It might not be enough,” I said.

“It might not be,” she agreed. “But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t right. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth it.”

I looked at her. “What if we lose? What if JJ turned down fifty grand for nothing?”

“Then you’ll have taught him something more valuable than money,” she said. “You’ll have taught him that some things are worth fighting for, even if you don’t win. You’ll have taught him loyalty. Integrity. Belief. And those lessons will stay with him for the rest of his life.”

I nodded. She was right. But it still hurt.

“One more game,” I said. “Ninety minutes. Everything on the line.”

“Then let’s make it count,” she said.

I worked the convenience store that night. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Three more shifts. Three more nights of stocking shelves and serving customers and thinking about football.

On Friday night, a regular customer, an old man who came in every night for a newspaper and a chocolate bar, asked me if I was okay.

“You look terrible, son,” he said. I laughed. “Big day tomorrow,” I said. He nodded, paid for his items, and left. As he walked out, he turned back. “Good luck,” he said. I had never told him about the football. I had no idea how he knew. But I appreciated it.

The final push was over. The final battle was about to begin. And the fate of our season, of our dream, of our very existence, was hanging by a thread. But we were ready. We were more focused, more motivated, and more united than ever before. We were a team on a mission. And we were ready to give it everything we had.

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