There are quite a few ways in which I don’t resemble a duck, but there is one way in which I do. Ducks are terrible at maths, if they lead a gaggle of four or five ducklings to a river, they can generally keep track of them all. If that number stretches beyond nine or ten they have no way of knowing how many ducklings are in their charge – they just have ‘many’. Stragglers beware.

I’d become quickly overwhelmed doing the calculations for simply attending the game at Exeter; we’d talked about going down if it was a coronation of our promotion. Those dreams evaporated mid-season and mid-table looked the most likely prospect – we weren’t going down for that particular wake. A late rally made things meaningful again and a play-off decider was on the cards. When we beat Peterborough, it looked like the play-offs would be decided against Stevenage and Lincoln and that Exeter would be a dead rubber. There were simply too many calculations, so I stuck to my favoured conclusion – an unequivocal ‘maybe’. By the time the whole thing resolved itself, all the tickets had gone.

Even so, for it to be ‘one of those days’ things had to go our way. We’d needed to win, except in the circumstances where we didn’t, we would need to rely on Lincoln dropping points, or Barnsley or even Blackpool. Frankly, who knew anymore?

Beyond that, Exeter, despite their mid-table finish, were on a good run, but had nothing to play for. Lincoln were playing the champions, undeniably the best team in the division, but what effect would a couple of weeks in the pub have? And they’re resting six regulars you say? Great. Barnsley, at home to Northampton, are in some kind of death spiral having imploded by firing their manager. 

The artistry of a league table is its ability to conceal its truth until the very last moment. After nearly 2,500 hours of football, played for 10 months, from Carlisle to Exeter, the conclusion is determined in the final moments of the last act. It’s a piece of Victorian engineering which competes with anything created by Brunel, Stevenson or Telford.

But there were still too many permutations, it was positively Boolean – ‘Oxford win BUT Lincoln lose AND Barnsley drop points THEN Oxford make the play-offs’. On and on it went, a deep rabbit hole of possibilities. My mind closed off, I disappeared into the abstract and nebulous; we couldn’t do it, not because we couldn’t do it, but because it was too complicated. 

The usual fantasists and dreamers had travelled west, a compulsive yellow wave driven by something beyond the numbers. It’s another beauty of the league table – it means everything and yet, at the same time, it means nothing at all. 

Being in the moment would be crucial, in the past I’ve been caught out by the iFollow delay, goals have been signalled by the buzzing of someone’s phone moments before the ball has gone in on the screen. Devices were put away, so for the next couple of hours, we would live on iFollow time ‘GMT +90 seconds’. 

The screen came on, Exeter’s halfway line camera points at the off-centre Adam Stansfield Stand making it look like the pitch is on the wonk. Fitting really, nothing was normal anymore. Elliott Moore and Joe Bennett returned to the starting line-up, it felt like Des Buckingham, forever the sensible grown-up in the room, wanted the bigger boys in control. This wasn’t a nihilistic pursuit into the hands of fate, we would control the controllables. Damn you Des and your quiet thoughtfulness. He didn’t even want to know what was going on in the other games until the hour mark, although he later admitted he’d been lying, in doing so, he finally admitted he was human.

We opened with a sharp purpose, a clarity which we so rarely see. It reminded me of playing Rushden in the Conference play-off semi-final, or the final against York when we controlled the moment. Last year we faced with a must-win at Forest Green while ifs, buts and maybes swirled around like autumn leaves in a hurricane, perhaps the five players involved that day could draw on those experiences. As much as we wanted it to be over and to force the outcome, we had to allow the drama to come to us. Our patience, which has sometimes manifested itself as ponderousness, needed to be used to our advantage. 

The focussed intensity brought early chances, Ruben Rodrigues should have opened the scoring before Mark Harris pressed Pierce Sweeney into a mistake in the centre-circle and set off towards goal. A smart finish made it 1-0, Harris’ 19^th goal of the season; imagine what he could do if he was a natural goalscorer? The players gathered to congratulate him, but there was a steeliness. This wasn’t done yet.

With Lincoln drawing with Portsmouth, it was all working out. Jerome Sale calmed the stormy seas of optimism by assuring us ‘there’s a long way to go’. It was like standing on a sea wall watching a tsunami on the horizon. 

I felt myself recoiling, grief is the price you pay for love; having not expected it, I now thought we could do it. But, if I wanted it too much, the pain of the loss would be too great. I wasn’t thinking of trips to Peterborough or Bolton or Wembley, I was thinking about how we’d recover from this devastating failure. This doom-ridden cave is my safe space.

But while I retreated, the team advanced. Ciaron Brown nearly made it two before Murphy danced into the box and was sent sprawling. Penalty. It’s clearly easier to be in this maelstrom than to watch it.

I can’t figure Cameron Brannagan out; dedicated professional? Street fighter? Thoughtful technician? Homebody? Raging with toxic masculinity? Fish obsessed? The self-declared ‘machine’ drilled in the spot kick. Whatever he is, we’re lucky to have him.

Attention switched elsewhere, Lincoln were drawing and that was enough. Eight minutes of injury time shifted time again. Lincoln were now a few minutes behind us, not only was I on a 90 second delay because of iFollow, destiny was two or three minutes behind that. Time was no longer functioning properly.

Whether the results elsewhere had crept into the dressing room and the enormity of what was happening had started to seep in, we started to concede territory as the second half opened. Perhaps there was an added incentive for Exeter to make a proper mess of things for us. Either way, the plates began to shift, while we were still resolute, everything was happening in our half.

Then it struck, the tsunami hit landfall, as Exeter probed down the right there was news from Sincil Bank. Penalty to Lincoln. The BBC switched audio, we were confronted by sensory overload of watching Exeter attack while listening to Radio Lincoln describing the penalty 250 miles away. The cadence of the commentary matched the drama visuals, even though it was describing something completely different and made no sense. The numbers, the calculations were meaningless. We were in two different timezones and two different locations all at the same time.

Daniel Mândroiu, scorer of the dubious penalty at The Kassam which had set this nonsense up stepped up. The astral influence of fate rested on his shoulder. The beneficiary of gross injustice 10 days ago placed his foot by the ball and inexplicably it gave way, his other foot swept through and connected with the ball, but it was too straight and cannoned off the keeper. As the sound faded back to Nathan Cooper, the Lincoln commentator could be heard saying ‘… and that could be Lincoln’s season done.’ We were gone before we could ask more questions.

We leapt around the living room while an idle dog walker glanced in to see what the commotion was about. Our veins throbbing and heads pulsing, we returned to the screen, the ball was in the back of our net. They’d scored; I don’t know how, but they had. Nathan Cooper assured us the players hadn’t been distracted by our distractions, but I don’t know what to think anymore.  

We were in a sea with no tides, the rip curls and undercurrents could drag us below the surface, or a gentle sea breeze could help us to drift harmlessly to the beach. Fate was packing its kitbag and handing itself over to something beyond fate. It was all very meta. We’d been indulged but marginalised by Liam Manning’s cold execution, then expected too much of Des Buckingham moving his family half-way around the world to pick up where his predecessor left off. But now, we were all there, wherever that was, in that moment. In the stands, on the radio, ninety seconds behind on iFollow, we were at one with nature; it’s taken months, but we were all suddenly in the same emotional space. Stick that in your spreadsheet.

Now, every edge was a knife edge and it was just where we wanted to be. The clock started again, Portsmouth scored and Lincoln’s threat subsided. Another in injury time confirmed it. We were, I think, safely in the play-offs. The final whistle went, celebrations were wildly cautious, it was all very Des Buckingham. The BBC switched to Radio Lincoln, but things were also happening at Barnsley, Northampton had equalised and we’d gone up to fifth. For a few moments nobody knew what was happening.

All the calculations and permutations, the underlying stats, the high presses and low blocks. The grinding rationality of stadium planning, the interminable discussions of contracts and transfer windows, the steaming poisonous fatal abyss that a season in the Championship would bring and still, despite best attempts to bring certainty and riches to those who deserve it least, football’s spirit rises again. And with it, so do we.