The occasional appearance of League One football during the World Cup, particularly after it was wiped out by the weather last weekend, has felt a bit like burying your husband in the garden then accidentally digging up the odd limb while planting chrysanthemums.

It almost comes as a surprise, when it appears it’s a reminder of a more grizzled reality. But what a joy it is, for all the inauthentic billion-dollar slickness of the World Cup, there is something about League football’s imperfections that makes it somehow purer. 

I don’t begrudge teams seeking absolute technical perfection, or an event which aims to do the same – putting aside the crimes against humanity required to do that, of course – but there’s a beauty in two teams going out in the wintery gloom and punching each other on the nose for ninety minutes.

My 12-year-old nephew is an Everton fan, he regularly goads me about our lowly status, he doesn’t understand that our worlds are different; his is an experience that he’s learnt through TV, mine is one I’ve felt. The hierarchy is an irrelevance. While he is mesmerised by the best players, and will happily walk around in a PSG tracksuit, he has yet to learn that the best games are the ones where the hierarchy is smashed and the seemingly perfect, is proven to be nothing of the sort

iFollow can be a numbing experience, a reminder of a year locked away, but the Sheffield Wednesday game poured out of the screen. a thrilling, belching mess, like an attack of orcs in Lord of the Rings. It just reminded me of the simple pleasure of the numbing cold, the frustration and the near glory of League football.

The fact it was goalless gives it added panache, no Qatari billionaire is going to understand the pleasure of a game with no goals, or the immense satisfaction of seeing your team throwing themselves into desperate defensive blocks just to keep a clean sheet and scrape a point. They’re buying brand new Ferraris, we’re keeping a much loved camper van, and all its memories, on the road.

It is, of course, all about perspective. The immediate reaction from Sheffield Wednesday fans to the result was bemoaning their lack of creativity with the loss of Barry Bannan. Their baseline is at a Championship level, until they reach there, they’re failing. 

We aspire for Championship football, but League One is not a bad level for a club of our size. Yes, the season has been generally underwhelming and progression seems to have slowed or regressed. But sometimes you’ve got to step back and admire the beauty of the human experience.

There was no lack of effort or attacking threat, defensively we looked solid enough bar one or two scares you’d expect playing away from home. The open goal from James Henry and the penalty from Josh Murphy should have won it, but the fact they didn’t gives the game a different, but no less engaging texture. It’s life, I suppose, a melting pot of luck and missed opportunities, if it were a simpler equation – effort equals success – it would be much less interesting.

One minor technical point on the penalty, when Murphy took it, we only had one player following it into the box and they came from the right-hand side. The ball rebounded to the left, but nobody was there to follow it in. I don’t know if these things are thought about in any detail, and I suppose, after 96 minutes, it’s easy for the brain to become befuddled. A bit like trying to decide who your third-choice penalty taker should be.  

It’s easy to be frustrated by the missed opportunities, but before the game the Wasn’t At The Game Show podcast were saying that a point from either yesterday or Ipswich on Boxing Day would be considered a good return. I agree, if you’d put those two fixtures six weeks apart and then looked back on the season to see we’d lost them both, you’d think it was about par for the course. Losing them together would create an illusion of poor form. Any points from these games are bonuses, which is not to ignore that we’ve also dropped points we shouldn’t have this season.

So, we’ve got a couple of free hits and already connected with one of them, now we can simply enjoy the spectacle of the games themselves. Sometimes you’ve got to do that, otherwise you’ll end up so frustrated with life that you clonk your husband on the head with a frying pan and bury him in the garden.