Apart from the ten months of misery required to precede it, a relegation decider is a special place to be. For us, it’s an almost generational event. Thankfully we’ve rarely been in a relegation scrap in the last forty years, less still that netherworld where you don’t know if you’re good enough, so have to rely on the final few games for confirmation.

Still, once you get there, there are a few important ingredients; the pivotal game must be away from home, it must be sunny to signal that this isn’t the proper football season, there must be endless mathematical possibilities to wrestle with in real time and there must be a limited or confusing input of communication from the outside world as the game is played.

It is, in essence, a form of sadomasochism. In fact, apparently the appeal of BDSM type activities is the loss of self, and the submission of control. The whole goal is to confuse your senses. Sounds awful, but perhaps we’re all sexual degenerates after all.

We did, after all, comfortably sell out our allocation at Forest Green for a game which, given when tickets went on sale, could easily have been a game to confirm our relegation. There were plenty of people willing to put themselves beyond their comfort zone to find a new kind of pleasure.

What threatened to be a frenzied afternoon started rather meekly. Kyle Joseph burst through after ten minutes to put us in the lead and Forest Green melted in front of our eyes. There’s a famous story of Glenn Hoddle getting frustrated with his players at Swindon for not being able to spray 60 yard cross-field balls like he did in his pomp. Perhaps Forest Green’s players can’t muster the anger and passion that their manager Duncan Ferguson is famed for so have just given up trying. Perhaps defending the honour of Nailsworth is not really worth all that vein bulging anger.

Liam Manning’s approach to survival has been the polar opposite of Ferguson’s. Calm things down, get the basics right; build, build, build. It’s been so methodical; some fans have alluded to it being boring, wanting instead for Manning to channel their own anxieties by losing his shit on the touchline. But, he didn’t rise to the bate, perhaps he was about to confirm survival in the most boring way imaginable.  

By half-time, it seemed so. Cambridge were winning but MK Dons were losing to Barnsley with Herbie Kane scoring; that was good enough. Barnsley were surely too good to throw it away. Nick Harris chuckled at the naiveté. The only angst was that Forest Green couldn’t be as submissive as they had been in the first half, Ferguson wouldn’t let them.

It turns out Forest Green could be as submissive as they had been in the first half. Within a minute of the re-start, we were swarming all over them in their final third causing them to panic and pass the ball like school kids chucking around a contraband vape during a teacher raid on the school toilet block. The ball ran loose and Tyler Goodrham, a constant spark of hope this season, picked it up and bent it home for 2-0.

It was now all about what was happening elsewhere, within two minutes MK had equalised. Four minutes later it was 2-1. Nathan Cooper, trying to eek some life out of our game, tried to open up the discussion around the future and next season before interrupting himself.

“What is it Jerome?” he said, clearly reading Jerome Sale’s ashen face as bad news.

Sale sounded like a man who’d accidentally sent a sexy WhatsApp message, intended for his wife, to his boss. 

“You know what” he said, calculating scenarios furiously hoping to find one which gave him the answer he’d been looking for “This isn’t enough.”

Then MK scored again, and four minutes later Cambridge doubled their lead at Accrington. While on the pitch we were calmly dominating in a way that we hadn’t seen all season, the commentary box descended into a form of paralysis. 

You sensed that Cooper wanted to put the microphone down and gently hold Sale for a while. They’d been through so much together and now this. But, it would be OK in League Two, as long as they were together, wouldn’t it? Eddie Odhiambo on co-commentary, a bit of a gooseberry in all this, didn’t know what to do. He eventually did the equivalent of putting the kettle on by sticking to describing Oxford’s tactical shape. Useful, practical, distracting.

As Billy Bodin lashed home a third and the players celebrated, MK scored again to make it 4-1. It was horrible, the players seemed so happy, they’d been released from their 17 game purgatory and had found themselves again. We can all be paid to play football and lose every week, what really makes a professional footballer is their ability to win. Someone would have to tell them that it had all been for nought. Even if they scored three more, we’d still have to win next week.

As Cooper and Sale discussed how weak and feeble Barnsley were, a blame displacement activity, they scored again, then again, but even at 4-3 a full recovery seemed improbable. Time ticked on, at Forest Green the game faded into the background, the crowd hushed. Perhaps if we all sneak out now, nobody will notice our once naive hope that we might be good enough to stay up.

In the days of smartphones, where all information is available all the time to everyone in real time, we can be our own fact checkers. In the past, when the only contact with the outside world was a transistor radio reporting every game in the country through one narrow channel the delays, rumours and misinformation was rife. Now, any change now would be instantaneously available to everyone. Everyone looked at their phone. 

With four minutes to go, there was a yelp in the crowd, it was loud enough for Jerome Sale to stumble. Decades of BBC training kicked in; fact check, verify. The roar got louder as it swept down the Oxford terrace. Sale furiously searched for confirmation, but there wasn’t any. It might not be the goal we were looking for. It could be a penalty. It might just be some scamp starting a stampede for a laugh. It could be anything.

Twitter lit up, something had happened, eventually confirmation, Barnsley had equalised. MK had collapsed in the most spectacular way possible. Was Manning’s parting shot at Milton Keynes to install a vulnerable ventilation shaft, ready to be exploited at the right moment? Is that why he’s so calm? If so, Barnsley had hit it full-square and the Death Star had exploded.

The whistle went, and now we wait. The players stood on the pitch, the jeopardy hung heavily, if MK scored now, they would have to trudge off as failures. There was an eternal silence, Radio Oxford tried to switch to the game, but managed to tune into Sheffield Wednesday’s game at Shrewsbury. A team from Oxford standing in Nailsworth waiting for a team from Barnsley to see out a game in Milton Keynes while listening to a game in Shropshire. Miles apart, yet bound together. Eventually the whistle went, MK had dropped points and we were safe; certainly? No, probably. But just enough. Fans and players celebrated, it looked like joy, but it was relief. Everyone knows we shouldn’t be in this situation. For most of us who’d travelled to Derby on the first day of the season anticipating glory, it was humbling and humiliating, but for Liam Manning, it’s been a triumph, he had one job and he did it.