Knowledge Is Money

Maureen came into my office on the Friday with the green ledger and a second sheet clipped to the front of it, and she laid the second sheet down first.

"Before you go and lose a week’s sleep over 2 football matches," she said, "look at what they are worth. So you know the size of what these lads are carrying out onto the grass."

I looked.

[ WHAT A DIVISION IS WORTH · Maureen’s projection ]League Two central payment, this season: the figure we scrape the year together on.League One central payment: close to double it, before a single extra ticket is sold.Bigger gates. A shirt sponsor who stops haggling. The stand fund clear inside 2 years, not 6.A club worth buttons this morning, worth a number on Sunday I would not say out loud with Sully in the county.

"Close to double," I said.

"Close to double, off the league money before a turnstile so much as clicks. The bigger gates come in on top of that."

"A sponsor who stops haggling and starts phoning. Everything in this game runs toward a club going the right way, and it lands on us all at once." She took the sheet back and squared it against the desk.

"You built a thing worth a fortune, Sam. On Saturday week, 11 lads decide whether the fortune lands or waits us out another year."

"I know it, Maureen."

"You know it up in your head, where you keep the whole world filed away." She tapped the ledger with one finger.

"I wanted it down here where your eyes could have it for once, in my own hand, so you would stop calling the money the small hat you put on. It was never the small hat. It is the whole roof, and it goes on in 90 minutes."

Saturday I gave Ted my spare seat in the away box. He was the one man in the town I wanted sitting in it.

He held the ticket at arm’s length in the car park at Underhill, turning it over as if the back of it had the score already printed.

"Directors’ box. Me. In these trousers."

"You have earned that seat more than any director who ever warmed it. 60 years earns it, Ted."

"60 years." He looked at the little tin ground, the floodlights coming on pale against a grey London sky. "I stood on the Bovril End for the first time in 1952, holding my old man’s hand. I was 5. He lifted me over the turnstile so he would not have to pay the tuppence."

"You have never told me that one."

"He never saw us climb out of this basement, my dad. Went to his grave with us stuck in the 4th tier exactly where we are stood this minute." Ted slid the ticket into his top pocket, behind the 1996 scarf.

"If we go up next week, I will be the first Cutler in 3 generations to see it. That is what I am carrying today, son. Do not mind me if I go quiet on you."

"You have never been quiet a day in your life, Ted."

"No." He almost smiled. "And I am not about to start with the biggest week of it stood ahead of me."

ding, ding, ding. Bald Tony’s hand bell came ringing across the car park ahead of the away support, the same bell he has swung at Tilbrook games since before I was born in either life.

"There." Ted lifted his chin at the sound. "That is my whole life, that bell. Come on. I have waited long enough to sit down and watch us try."

Underhill was small and tight and full to its old rafters, and the away end was ours, 700 who had come down the motorway on a working man’s Saturday because a club does not climb out of the 4th tier twice in one lifetime and you go while your legs still take you.

"WE FOLLOW THE AMBER, OVER LAND AND SEA."

The home end had its own war on. Barnet were scrapping for their lives at the wrong end of the table, a single point above the drop, and their crowd sang the way men sing when they are bailing a boat with their hands.

"STAY UP. STAY UP. STAY UP."

"2 desperate ends." Ted unscrewed the top off his flask. glug, the tea steaming up into the cold.

"Us dreaming at one end, them drowning at the other. Somebody drives home from here tonight with his heart broke clean in half."

"I would rather it was one of them than one of us, Ted."

"So would I, son. God forgive the pair of us for it."

Peep. And I sat down in the dark, the way every soul around me had sat all their lives, with no idea on this earth how the afternoon ended.

For 20 years I had watched football knowing. Now I gripped the cold rail and took the afternoon a minute at a time, my heart up in my throat, nothing laid out behind my eyes to steady myself against.

Just the grass, and 22 lads on it, and the same held breath the whole away end was holding.

We started careful, a side with a lot to lose playing like a side with a lot to lose. Gray got in behind them once and dragged his shot across the face. thwock, off the side netting.

"Ohh," went the 700, up out of their seats and back down in one breath.

"He should bury that." Ted had both hands wrapped round the cup. "Go on, tell me he buries the next one."

"I cannot tell you a single thing any more. That is the trouble with me these days, Ted."

Barnet came at us with long throws and second balls and the flat-out desperation of the nearly drowned. One of their lads smashed a half-volley that Braithwaite flung himself across to turn round the post. crack. slap. Our corner sucked in its breath as one animal and let it out again.

"Save of the season, that," Ted breathed. "And we are only in April."

Down the other end Reece curled one that dipped a foot over the bar, and our 700 roared like it had gone in. whoosh. A drum started up behind the goal, deep and steady. boom. boom. boom-boom-boom.

"They are giving it everything, our lot," Ted said. "700 of them, singing their lungs raw at a tin shed in North London and loving every cold minute of it."

"They came down for a promotion party, Ted. Down on the grass it does not feel like one yet."

"The players feel every ounce of what it is worth. That is the half of it. You can read it in their legs."

Peep. A corner beaten away. Then another. We rode it, and we reached half time level, and the tension in that away end could have lit the floodlights on its own.

Peep peep. 0-0.

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