On Saturday we were on the M40 heading towards London when on the other side of the motorway a cavalcade of police motorbikes came flying down the carriageway with their lights flashing. Some were peeling off to block junctions and stop traffic. Then a second group came past, then two Range Rovers. In the next lane was a car driving alongside one of the Range Rovers with a photographer hanging out the window. 

It looked terrifying, we speculated that it might be Prince Harry heading from the coronation back to the airport and wondered how long it would take to appear on the Daily Mail website. 

The answer was an hour, a hyperbolic story about his dash from the ceremony to the airport. There was something about a snub and obviously a snipe at his wife who wasn’t even there. That’s the speed of the news cycle nowadays. It’s the nature of dying traditional news, even the most trivial things have to be unrelentingly sensational. You only have to look at The Oxford Mail’s desperate attempts to create their own breed of sensationalism, and subsequent clicks, when they promote readers’ letters about our stadium plans as expert analysis. It’s just designed for us to click on the link in outrage so they can gain a few more pence in advertising revenue. 

These moments are ultimately inconsequential. Imagine a world where the news wasn’t hourly, but there was just one newspaper every ten years. The biggest headlines would be things like medical breakthroughs, increasingly long periods of peace and collaboration and general improvements to standards of living. A newspaper on a super-slow cycle like that would be full of good news, or at least less full of bad news.

It’s hard to judge this season close up, history will ultimately decide its relevance; the ominous rumblings of our imminent collapse or a transition into something new. It might be the opening paragraphs of a story in which we move away from plucky unsustainability and towards a bright future.  

Would we look back on this season as ultimately being forgettable? A brush with relegation, but like throwing a baby into the air, briefly letting and then catching them, was it a scare, with a hint of peril, that wasn’t dangerous after all?

While it’s hard to make any judgements, yesterday reminded us that the corner hasn’t been turned just because of good results in our last two games. Following the win against Forest Green, you’d have thought that there were no problems and we’d want to tie the whole squad to five year contracts. The problem had been mean Karl Robinson, but he’s gone and now we’re fixed.

Accrington, despite their relegation, have a reputation of being party spoilers. Even with nothing to play for, they’re happy to muck in and give you a kick in the shins. None-the-less, there was a relaxed feeling about the place with both teams seemingly accepting their fate. Only as I arrived at the ground did it dawn on me that, theoretically at least, we could still be relegated.

Still, when Billy Bodin opened the scoring, Accrington looked like they’d had enough. Shackles off, we threatened to put on a show, Marcus Browne weaving through their defence, Tyler Goodrham looking to go out in style with another spectacular goal. It reminded me of my own greatest football moment. As it’s the end of season, let me indulge myself by telling you all about it.

I was a teenager; we were playing an informal game in a park against a group of kids we didn’t know. They had a super-keen goalkeeper who was at least five years younger, but he had a proper goalkeeper’s top on and his own gloves. 

I found myself clear with just him to beat, went to shoot but faked it. The kid dived spectacularly to try and save a shot I hadn’t made. It was like a Jedi mind-trick as he leapt out of my way giving me an open goal. I could hear the laughs as I advanced towards the goal. I placed the ball on the line and decided that to score would almost spoil the moment. I simply left it there and jogged back to the centre circle. It was a moment of grand hubris, people gasped as I transcended above the mere trivialities of scoring. 

Yesterday seemed to have the same vibe; the plan was to outclass them to such a degree we’d even choose when we were going to score. As we’d shown in the previous two games, it wasn’t that we couldn’t score goals, it’s just that in the past we didn’t want to. We were that good. They would be toyed with, tossed about and humiliated while the baying hoards in the stands would laugh uproariously.

Even into the second half it seemed like we’d end the season with an avalanche of goals and a wave of good will. On the hour, we started making substitutions, giving the players their moment in the spotlight we gave them standing ovations they barely deserved.

That seemed to disrupt our flow and they equalised with a goal reminiscent of the last days of Karl Robinson; a long speculative drive which Simon Eastwood had too much time to think about. Chances then came in that disjointed, half-hearted way they do in meaningless games before sure enough, Accrington did resurrect their spirit to somehow fashion a winner.

The final whistle came and there was a peculiar atmosphere; we’d completed a season in which we’d achieved nothing, we’d even failed to narrowly miss out on achieving something, we’d even failed to succeed in avoiding failure. There was nothing to celebrate apart from the fact it was over. Even so, trudging off the pitch and heading for the exit seemed too abrupt an end. As I walked to the exit, the TV were playing scenes from Cambridge celebrating their survival. It was raucous and celebratory, exhausted players being tossed around by jubilant fans. We just wanted to go home and pretend none of this had happened.

Our moment was against Forest Green, I guess, and perhaps it’s good that we go into the summer with a reminder that to have that moment required us to have a very poor season. Something will have to change in the summer if we’re to avoid something similar next season, some things already have, with the arrival of Liam Manning and he’ll know that the pressure to do better will start to increase. Hopefully others recognise that, it could be easy to think the job is done and everyone deserves a rest, but now is time for the hard yards to begin.