When I got home from last night’s draw against Bolton, I was greeted by the warm welcoming embrace of my house in total darkness. I opened the door, sensing the cat inquisitively lurking around at my feet, I climbed the stairs and poked my head around the door.

“What was the score?” came a muffled voice from the gloom, the slight drawl was not, I suspect, the result of a heavy dose of horse tranquilisers, but a brief arousal from a deep sleep. 

“0-0” I said in a whisper. 

“Sounds boring.”

This is the usual depth of sporting analysis in my house. Monday Night Football would struggle to fill three hours of pre-match analysis of Burnley v Wolves if, for some reason, Jamie Carragher wasn’t available and Sky decided to do house to house enquiries for a replacement.

I’ve long since given up trying to explain the unique enjoyment of a good goalless draw to those who can’t even understand the unique joy of football.

There are few sports, if any, which tolerate a game that can fail to produce a single breakthrough moment. There’s a tactic in track cycling where both riders will manoeuvre into a ‘track stand’ – balancing their bikes so that they’re completely stationary, an act of brinkmanship where you try to catch your opponent off-guard and gain an advantage in a sprint. Years ago, when the deadlock could last over twenty minutes, the authorities stepped in and banned the practice.

Rule changes, shot clocks, overtime, most sports have invented something to prevent a featureless stalemate. Football is unrepentant – goalless draws have a value, they just demand more of your attention to understand why.

I can roughly work out the size of a crowd from how busy the Grenoble Road is before a game, there’s a baseline of about 5,000 on which you can add another 1,000 fans for every roundabout the parking reaches as you drive away from the stadium. On Tuesday, as I turned onto the road, there wasn’t a car in sight, I felt deflated; this was Big Des’ Big Homecoming Return Home To His Home but the narrative hadn’t caught the city’s imagination.

I walked towards the ground feeling like we were heading to the gallows, a few weeks earlier, I’d earmarked it as true top of the table clash. Then there was the defeat to Cheltenham and Bolton’s ascent to the top of the table after a 7-0 win, it felt like two teams going in opposite directions. 

Watching the squad warm up, it was striking how threadbare our coaching staff seemed to be; Chris Hackett warming up the subs, Craig Short prepping the starting eleven. Bolton were on a run of eight consecutive wins in all competitions and hadn’t conceded in nine hours of football. It wasn’t looking good.

But far from being overwhelmed, the first half fizzed by, the storm didn’t come, we weren’t just containing them, we were matching them. We may even have been bettering them. Oxford Analytics tweeted at half-time:

In old money, that’s a midfield tussle, but in a modern game of setting traps and drawing your opponent into making mistakes, the idea of the two teams baiting each other was like a track stand in a bike race – an act of brinkmanship in which nobody wanted to be the first to blink.

And that’s the beauty of a goalless draw – two teams held in perfect symmetry, in each others’ thrall, desperately looking for an opportunity to break away. We took our risks in the first half – Mills looked a threat, just a bit raw to find the killer ball or finish the job himself. Brannagan tested the keeper with a couple of audacious attempts which was more Robinson-era Brannagan than Manning’s chillier efficiency. 

We started to wobble in the second half, the growing intensity tested our resolve, but rather than freeze or go down in flames in that classic Robinson kamikaze style, Buckingham held his counsel, the title wouldn’t be decided tonight, we wouldn’t blink because we didn’t need to. It needed clear thinking and the grown ups to take charge.

Substitutions were pragmatic – Negru beefed up the back line, O’Donkor barrelled around causing mischief, pressing back their growing threat. The referees whistle brought the game to an end, we hadn’t held them, we hadn’t contained them, we’d played them and matched them. There was a contented buzz, a wide acknowledgement that this was two teams playing high quality League One football, it didn’t need goals.