I looked at my pocket watch: exactly twenty to five. We had crossed over into stoppage time – a vague period with a very defined group of emotional associations. Sometimes you feared the seconds, shooing them away with piercing whistles; sometimes you welcomed them, begged them not to go, as you urged action on the pitch and a desperate twist in the tale. Sometimes you marked it out aloofly, with the result foregone and the excitement spent. But today was different, and as I glanced at Jack Dudley, sharing a crush barrier with me on Edgeley Park’s Pop Side, I knew he was feeling something similar. Sunshine illuminated in spring green those patches of the pitch that had survived the long season unploughed by muddy boots, and there was the blue of Stockport’s shirts and multi-coloured advertisements around the ground to add to the colour. A few rows down a boy in a woollen hat of brightest magenta bobbed up and down in search of his team, his view unimproved and enthusiasm undiminished in 91 minutes.

A cheerful enough sight, then, but football was never something you just looked at.

We leaned side by side on the barrier, drawing on our Woodbines, eyes fixed on the pitch. Many around us headed out; what was the hurry? There would be plenty of time for the pub, while on the other hand this could well be the last pass Collins ever played to Brook, this the last occasion Tommy Evans clutched the ball to his chest, this the last ever long pass from Albert Groves…. Each time the ball went out of play I looked around the stands, memorizing the sight of these crowds that wouldn’t be seen together for who-knew-how-long. I whistled at Bluer’s tackle on Jack Needbas, and groaned when Frank Curtis was denied his twenty-sixth goal of the season by a fine save, but though the game was tied, the course of the match was secondary in my mind to the fact that there was still a match on. A quick look at the referee confirmed the whistle had not yet been brought to his lips; there was still some time. Here we were with friends, making temporary home in a place not our own, sharing something. We wanted to treasure it, but you cannot guard anything from time’s jealousy, and all you ever do when you try is to steep yourself in its passing, take special note of how it will soon no longer be yours. And so the three shrill blasts travelled through the clean April air, and the season was over, and football was no more.

We decided on a pub, ordered drinks, shared fags, found a seat on the last small table in the Sir Robert Peel Hotel. No other words passed between us until Jack, setting his glass on the table after a long pull on his Best, asked if I thought any of the players would enlist.

“Some will, ar.” Other tables, too, were silent. There was a question both of us wanted to ask – a question that mattered. But we didn’t want to ask it, or know how to ask it. Or we wanted to be asked it first.

When a glass was dropped behind the bar it changed all meaning, like new punctuation.

The moment passed.

We left the pub.

We changed at Crewe.

We were home.