After the suffocating claustrophobia of a relegation ravaged winter, the international break felt like we’d been given shore leave. The clocks changed and the evenings became lighter. The club announced financial losses so bowel shaking you have to wonder whether money has any value at all. Then we went from the brink of having a record number of Oxford United players at the World Cup to having none. As it all seemed to die down, there was a row about Northern Ireland’s manager Michael O’Neill conflict of interest because he’s also Blackburn’s manager. Even Stefan Negru became Moldovan, the equivalent of waking up and finding a regrettable drunken late-night tattoo scrawled across your chest and wondering how the heck it got there.  

Unless you care about what Thomas Tuchel’s post-Harry Kane England looks like, despite all this, the clean air of the break was a relief. For a few sweet days, nobody had to worry about our form or fitness, West Brom’s players’ body language or whether Gary Rowett had found a long throw specialist at Leicester. We were free to live our lives and re-engage with the real world.

For weeks, all eyes have been on Portsmouth on Monday, meaning the Hull game seemed to slip off the radar. We’re constantly assured that Pompey is ‘vital’, but did anyone give any thought about what we might need from Hull? If we won, could we afford to lose on Monday? Or did we need to win both?

And then there’s Hull, on The Dub, football finance expert Kieran Maguire described The Championship as the clown car of European football. Hull, in many ways embody that, they started the season failing to pay their players, they’re ending it with a decent chance of promotion. In a division of gamblers rolling loaded dice in hope of the jackpot, they may just win the house.

Shore leave over, we willingly, we climbed back into the submarine to be submerged back into the dark murky waters of the relegation fight. With all the wonders of the world to explore, this is what we love to do. Let’s not forget, it is ultimately a choice even though it doesn’t always feel like that.

It’s easy to assume the players are like us and that the international break was spent eating hot cross buns and mowing the lawn. But, while we eased our way back into the intensity, they were quicker to re-engage. After just three minutes, Hull’s centre-back, Semi Ajay launched a long ball out to the right wing towards Mohamed Balloumi. Ruben Rooksens looked like was distracted by the scratching noise of a nesting dormouse coming from his loft. With the left-back otherwise engaged, Belloumi collected the ball and cut inside sharply, carving us wide open. Inevitability gripped the scene, on YouTube you can see Joe Gelhardt celebrating long before the Algerian slams the ball past Jamie Cumming, we’d all relived the goal a thousand times before it hit the back of the net.

For all the talk of Portsmouth on Monday, Hull on Friday was suddenly looking like a bleak and daunting prospect. Perhaps the pressure would be off by the time we got to Fratton Park, but maybe not in the way we wanted it to be. With his moustache and mullet, Belloumi looks like that pop star your dad’s never heard of playing at Socceraid, but he was twisting Rooskens into a infinite spiral of self-doubt, so much so, Matt Bloomfield had to hook him at half-time for his own good.

John Lundstram, a haircut like a marine, the build of a light heavyweight boxer and the threatening authority of a construction site foreman, sat deep carving an axis of pain to Belloumi threatening to dismantle us with each raking pass. We quaked in his impassive magisterial menace.

But, for every action, there’s a reaction, they may be in the play-offs, but Hull’s goal difference is just +5. They’re the third top goalscorers in the division, but have conceded more than we have. For all their attacking menace, they’re awash with defensive frailty.

Seven minutes after the goal, Konak, breaking things like a child with abandonment issues, robbed Matt Crooks allowing Jamie Donley to feed Will Lankshear. Lankshear who has spent the season practically carrying centre-backs around the pitch on his back was, for once, wide open. Charlie Hughes desperately slid to scythe him to the floor. The referee pointed to the spot; it seems Oxford like their penalties like your mum likes her men – two in quick succession and one at each end.

Brannagan slammed the ball in giving us a foothold and resetting the hive mind. For a team who are more comfortable without the ball than they are with it, we needed to take the initiative and prove attack was the best form of defence. Mills’ low bouncing cross was met on the stretch by Lankshear, Peart-Harris glided through but his liquid casualness failed to put the ball in the net. The goal didn’t come, but by half-time, we were outside the relegation zone.

With Spencer replacing Rooskens and containing the wilting Belloumi, the game skylarked on at an increasingly frantic pace. We continued to press, Helik and Brannagan had chances as the game took on a life of its own entirely independent of its tiring players. Hull’s fans sang ‘Que Sera Sera, we’re going to Wembley’, presumably in anticipation of their solidifying play-off place, it was oddly triumphant and defeatist at the same time. They didn’t need the points as much as us, whether they finish third or sixth is immaterial. For us, the margins are much finer, it was hard for us to know how much to risk ahead of Monday, both in terms of players and points.

With four minutes of injury time indicated, Hull began to concede to the draw which loosened their resolve. With seconds to go, as the fatigue soaked in, we worked the ball out of defence to feed Stan Mills, a player for whom there’s always one last run. Mills advanced, whipping a low cross to the back post, Harris, arriving at pace, stretched. The sunlit horizon of survival peaked briefly into view. But it was just beyond his control, he connected, but guided the narrowly ball wide. This wasn’t his miss at Bristol City, even if he’d wrapped his foot around the ball, he still had to guide it past the keeper’s hulking frame which was practically on top of him. Still, it was a moment, perhaps it was the moment.

The whistle went, a good point secured, we doomscrolled to find how others had got on; almost everyone else drew, nothing had changed. All except one thing; Portsmouth came into pin sharp focus.