I usually think the season doesn’t start until October; holidays, the closing of the transfer window, a detour into the League Cup and an international break all disrupt any sense of flow or rhythm. Only when the clocks go back does it feel like the season has properly started.

This season, it doesn’t feel like we can allow a couple of months to slide by before we find a groove. In League One, we could be reasonably confident of picking up wins throughout the season even when things felt a bit disjointed. This year, we’ll need points wherever and whenever we can get them and each one is likely to require a seismic effort. It’s the emotional intensity that will test us as much as anything.

Around this time last year we beat Derby at Pride Park on a similarly balmy summer’s evening. That didn’t feel real, I suppose it didn’t feel like playing Burton or Exeter in November or February. There’s a temptation to think of Coventry as a similar early-season sharpener with only bonus points on offer, but even in the opening week, it felt complacent to look at it like that.

I see Coventry as a benchmark club, not a kindred spirit or peer, but a club against which we can measure our progress. This is partly it’s to do with the fact that by the time we face them in the League Cup later in the month, we’ll have played them, on average every 79 days this year. It’s also to do with their recent history, the loss of their ground, their near extinction, their general mismanagement and despair that you can recover from. It’s also to do with the JPT Final in 2017, a Sliding Doors moment in which we were expected to win and springboard to great things and in the end the opposite happened.

There was a sense of confidence, even of invincibility, against a backdrop of results against Norwich and Peterborough, and winding back to last season; against Bolton, and Peterborough and Peterborough and Exeter all the way back to Peterborough (again). We went into the game off the back of one defeat in thirteen after THAT game at Bolton, another Sliding Doors moment. The last few months have created a sense of being in an unreal bubble that’s been pumped up with each passing success. I couldn’t contemplate a defeat and dared not entertain how that would feel. We were becoming unsinkable.

Mark Robins is massively underrated, he’s quietly built Coventry into an established Championship side with aspirations of going further. Their return to the Championship in 2020, like ours this year, was expected to be fleeting. But an admirable sixteenth place finish was followed by progressively improved positions and a narrow play-off final defeat until last season, where their cruel FA Cup semi-final defeat to Manchester United scuppered their run-in. If we’re to follow a chosen path, theirs rather than the anticipated ‘yo-yo for a bit’ is infinitely preferable.

It was clear early on that this was going to be a test and it wasn’t long before the breakthrough came, Joe Bennett’s feeble header into acres of space in midfield allowed Milan van Ewijk and Tatsuhiro Sakamoto overwhelm the retreating Bennett and plant a cross onto the head onto Haji Wright who thundered past Sam Long for the opening goal. If you want a benchmark, back in January we’d already conceded two after fifteen minutes, and were two minutes from conceding a third.

The game was quickly becoming all about resilience, and there are few more stoic than Ciaron Brown. There may be a time when we feel the need to upgrade our centre-backs, but for now Brown and Moore are cementing themselves alongside Shotton and Briggs, Gilchrist and Elliott, Creighton and Wright and Wright and Dunkley as another of the club’s great centre-back pairings. Brown lashed home the equaliser from a scramble, although it felt like respite as much as a fightback.

van Ewik restored the lead when the ball seemed to roll across the penalty box as if guided by remote control and we went into the break probably where we’d have expected to be. Despite Harris’ scratchy equaliser, it felt like the buffer we had to work with in the final third of the game rather than a platform to build a win from.

Coventry ratcheted up the intensity, a gradual suffocating of our sense of shape, structure or strategy. Jamie Cumming made a remarkable save parrying out Josh Eccles’ diving header cementing his growing stature. Last time we were here, Simon Eastwood played because James Beadle had been recalled, after a shaky start to his time with Oxford, Cumming has evolved into a more than able replacement.

As the witching hour approached, Cumming was called on for a double save and a comparatively routine parry from 25 yards. We were on our knees, it seemed only the bubble we’ve been in for the last few months would keep us safe.

The seven minutes of injury time didn’t, in fact, worry me. Injury time away from home when you’ve got something to hang on to is always anxious. The bubble had tricked me into thinking that it was simply a stress-test, like a bungee jump, it’s scary and designed to make you think you’re in danger, but you’re ultimately safe.

I was watching on OUTV, the pictures were about 15 seconds behind Twitter, the sound about half a second in front of the pictures. I was following the game in three separate timezones, in the final minute of injury time I turned my phone over to savour the moment. Will Vaulks collected the ball in midfield from a tired punt and looked up. I could hear the panic before I could see it, Vaulks’ assured pass seemed to be in a parallel dimension to Elliott Moore who looked unprepared. The ball threaded through to Wright clean through on goal. Every step felt like a razor blade slicing through our bubble allowing a bleaker reality to seep in. Moore looked helpless, his serene majesty replaced, his lack of pace exposed, Brown, Long and Bennett seemed not to be alert to the danger, none of us were.

My brain was expecting a heroic block or for Cumming to conclude his man of the match performance with a final wonder-save. But he too looked wrong-footed, the coup de grace arrived, Wright strolled past him and rolled the ball into the net. Our illusions became swamped in their joy.

We’ve lost games before, we’ve conceded last minute goals, but this was a like having your soul wrenched out of your throat. There are still plenty of positives, we’re clearly competitive, we have players to come in if we need to, this has been a good week surpassing all expectations. The truest test will be how we bounce back. It’s not yet September, but the season feels fully engaged.