I bail early from the post match title-winning party. I’m in the mood for a wake.

Joy and elation soon dissolve into anger; my hatred for Duncan reaches new levels by the time I wander into one of the hospitality suites at Wolston’s stadium, Lowfield Road, for our ‘celebration’ dinner.

I feel robbed. The euphoria of scoring the winner lasting barely the time it took to reach the centre-circle, right about when the substitutes’ board with ‘number nine’ appeared.

Come in number nine. Your time is up.

Okay. I know what you’re thinking.

Poor old Dave Shaw, is that violins I can hear in the background? Look at the bigger picture. Bop wanted to tighten up things in midfield, run the clock down.

Fine. I understand all that. I don’t need a refresher from the coaching manual. But why me?

Didn’t my goal prove once and for all I was over my ankle injury?

Bopper put his arms around me back in the dressing room, maybe the fact I was sat there forcing a smile through a grimace had given the game away.

I listened as he explained his reasons. We’d won a title. I didn’t have a leg to stand on. I was being self-centred and selfish.

Dave Shaw to a tee; the individual in the team.

So be it then, guilty as charged, but sat in the midst of all the bedlam I felt detached. Alone even.

Wolston’s hierarchy turns up to mark our achievement. Chairman Bryan Roe, first team manager Mark Peacock and Rob Duncan sit at the top table, the mastermind behind the latest triumph smugly holding court. This is another feather in his cap.

I pick at a five course meal. Mum and Dad probably putting their offspring’s dark mood down to sheer exhaustion as the last dregs of adrenaline drain from my body.

Duncan’s after-dinner speech is the final straw. Not for me. I make my excuses to Mum and Dad as the Scot stands to address the gathering and tell them I need some air. A favourite bolt hole beckons.

I manage to sweet talk a security guard into letting me wander out of the function room and through an emergency exit door leading to the stadium concourse. He buys the same cover story as my parents. I make my way down one of the gangways from the Sky Blue Stand, across the gravel track that borders the pitch and up the emergency steps into the West Stand behind one of the goals.

I want to sit in our family seats at the front of the upper tier. The same place Dad took me to watch Liverpool. The place we had season tickets practically every year since.

All those happy memories, maybe the odd bad one as well, this was Wolston after all. Those classic games, goals, songs, celebrations.

It was nearly midnight. The pitch is in total darkness. Only the lights from the hospitality suite in the Sky Blue Stand illuminate the ground on the near side.

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