Harbinger Of Glory

Jake’s header was perfect.

The direction, the power, the placement, all of it exactly where it needed to be, and Ingram felt the post against his left side as he threw himself across, hand outstretched, and somehow the ball still found the gap between his palm and the upright.

It bounced once on the line after it got past the Luton keeper before the latter turned and scooped it out with everything he had.

Behind the goal, the Wigan end was already up on their feet in anticipation.

Jake spun toward the referee with his arms out, the question written all over his face, but the referee shook his head and waved it away while pointing slowly toward the watch on his wrist.

He hadn’t felt any buzz; therefore, the ball hadn’t crossed the line.

The Wigan players looked at each other and said nothing because there was nothing to say, and Luton were already moving.

The loose ball had been snatched up by Sonny Bradley, and he didn’t waste any time shipping it forward.

Stationed on the flanks, Onyedinma took the ball on the right and went.

He went like he’d been waiting for exactly this moment, the kind of run that happens when a winger gets space and decides that now is the time, and the commentary tried to keep pace with him.

”Onyedinma, and he’s away. Luton breaking at pace and Wigan are all over the place trying to get back.”

In response to the opposition run, Joe Bennet came across from the centre to cut the angle, but at the last second, Onyedinma knocked it ahead and went past him with one clean and decisive burst.

The breath of the away fans hitched because now, there was grass ahead, and as a Wigan defence that had been caught in transition scrambled back, Taylor arrived from the other side of the pitch, having read the whole thing from the moment Onyedinma first moved.

”This is dangerous. This is very dangerous for Wigan.”

Before the commentator could come across with his point, Onyedinma did so for him as he squared it across the Wigan backline, which was still a few metres behind the ball, and Taylor.

The Luton forward took it in his stride, rounded Amos with the ease of a man who had done this enough times to know what came next, and now it was just him, the net, six yards of open goal and Kenilworth Road was rising from its seat.

Leo was still ten yards away when he committed to the slide.

He knew he probably wasn’t going to get there, but he went anyway because it was better than doing nothing.

The toe area of his boot caught the ball as Taylor tried to roll it in, the contact so slight it was almost nothing, almost invisible, but it was enough.

The ball shifted off its path and in the next second, caught the inside of the post and came back out into the box.

”TAYYYLOOOORRRRRRR UHHHHH, HE’S MISSED IT!”

Taylor, who had already turned towards the corner flag in celebration, came to a halt with his hands on his head and the expression of a man who could not explain what had just happened to him.

”The post. The post has saved Wigan. Leo Calderon with an almost impossible sliding intervention, and the post does the rest.”

The commentary came across on the broadcast as relief fanned through the Wigan fans watching from the comfort of their homes, but it wasn’t over.

Freeman arrived at the loose ball from the left, lunging at it with everything he had, and Leo was still on the ground when he turned and put his body behind it, his back smothering it right on the line before Amos came scrambling and got both hands around it and pulled it into his chest.

The away end erupted in applause after that as Leo lay flat on the turf for a moment, chest rising and falling.

His teammates, though, didn’t let him stay there for long.

The moment they got a breather, hands came from everywhere, pulling him up, while the noise from the Wigan end continued to come down in a wave that didn’t stop.

”I want to know,” the commentator said, and his voice had that particular quality it gets when something has moved past the professional register, ”how the Wigan supporters are feeling about that young man right now. Because what he has just done, twice, in the space of four seconds, is quite simply extraordinary.”

”Leo, you beautiful boy,” a man said, almost like a response to the commentator’s question that he hadn’t heard.

Around them, the Wigan supporters who had seen it all, the relegations and the administrations and the years of grinding and hoping and being let down, stood with their hands in the air and their voices cracking and the understanding between them that this was what it was all supposed to feel like.

This was what they had stayed for.

Back on the pitch, Amos got to his feet and threw the ball down as the Luton Town players immediately began swooping in, choosing to close down his options.

While they did so, Leo was already presenting himself as an option, and Amos found him immediately because everyone else had been swarmed, and Leo was the only clean shirt in the vicinity.

The moment he received it, the Luton players responded, collapsing inward as three of them converged at once with the specific urgency of a side that had just seen what happened when they gave him space.

Despite the pressing shouts from the fans telling him to clear it or look for an option, Leo held it.

He shielded it and kept it, his body low and strong until two players pressured him.

He shifted his weight and kept them both at arm’s length, rolling the ball under his sole.

Then the third came across, and Leo waited for him, waited until he was close enough to be useful, and then rolled it through his legs before using him as a screen, backtracking with the outside of his right boot in the same motion, circumventing all three before any of them had processed what had happened.

The Kenilworth Road crowd made a noise that didn’t quite have any feel to it.

To them, what Leo had done just felt so wrong.

The player in question, though, moved forward and released it to Will Keane, who had been making the run and touched it straight back, the communication between them wordless and immediate.

Leo, understanding what the former wanted, lifted the ball over the Luton backline in one movement, not even pausing to settle on it.

Keane curved to meet it as he neared the byline, holding onto the ball while praying for space, and the moment he saw an opening, he didn’t hesitate to send the ball across goal.

Ingram stepped out trying to smother the ball in its path, but at the last second, he stepped back as the ball bent away from him, tracking across the face of the goal toward the far corner, and Jake was there.

He knew.

You could tell from the way he set himself, the way his body positioned before the ball arrived, that he already knew this one was going in.

He caught it on the first, full connection, and smashed it across Ingram and under the crossbar on the far side, and the net gave it everything it had.

Jake stood completely still for half a second, stumped even though the ball had entered the net.

Then his hands went over his head, and he turned and ran straight at Dawson.

The manager had already left his technical area, arms out, and the Wigan bench came with him, the substitutes and the staff all pouring forward as Jake arrived and went into Dawson with his full weight.

”GOOAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!”

”ANOTHER FACE, SAME STORY. TEENAGE KICKS! JAKE SMASHES THE BALL INTO THE BACK OF THE NET ON HIS SENIOR DEBUT. AND WIGAN ATHLETIC HAVE SCORED AGAIN. TWO NIL ON THE NIGHT. THERE IS STILL TIME THOUGH I DOUBT IT, BUT AS IT STANDS, WIGAN HAVE ONE FOOT IN THE FINAL AT WEMBLEY.”

The co-commentator said nothing for a moment as the rest of the Wigan players bore down the sidelines in celebration.

Then, ”They are going to Wembley.”

In the Luton end, a few of their supporters had already sat back down.

Others stood with their hands hanging at their sides, staring at the scoreboard where the numbers read 84:45 and kept counting.

They knew that the remaining six minutes plus whatever came after wasn’t nothing, but it was close enough to nothing that the knowing had already set in.

On the opposite side, it was different. The Wigan fans could now settle in their seats and breathe knowing their team might have just done it again.

On the pitch, Jake surfaced from the pile of blue shirts and looked up at the sky above Kenilworth Road and laughed, short and incredulous, before pointing upwards, almost like he was announcing himself!