Harbinger Of Glory

Jake came out from under the pile, and the moment he did, Leo was the person his eyes found first.

He got off his knee and wrapped both arms around him, Leo, before patting the latter’s back twice.

”Well done,” Leo said with a smirk as Jake pulled back, grinning like he’d won the lottery, which in some ways he had.

”First senior goal,” he said, still slightly out of breath, but at the moment, nothing in the world seemed like it could make his smile falter.

”Yeah. Let’s just try and make it a habit,” Leo told him as he turned towards the Wigan half.

Jake watched him go for a second, still smiling, then followed a second later.

The Wigan fans were in full voice now, their chants rolling down from the away end and swallowing whatever the Luton supporters had left to give, which wasn’t much.

Around the ground, you could see it in the home fans, the slouched shoulders, the early movers heading for the exits, the ones still in their seats staring at the pitch like they were trying to find the moment it had slipped away.

”Wigan two, Luton nil on the night,” the commentator came back.

”Three one on aggregate and barring something truly extraordinary in these final minutes, Wigan Athletic are going to Wembley.”

After the return to proceedings, the final minutes didn’t really give anything extraordinary.

It just looked like football winding itself down.

Luton Town went through the motions of pressure without the belief behind it, while on the flip side, Wigan held shape, kept it simple and let the clock do its work.

When the referee’s whistle finally came, eleven minutes later, the away end erupted.

It was a nice feeling, but the celebrations were kept to a minimum.

They still had their work cut out for them, and so they felt doing too much would go against them.

On the pitch, the players pumped their fists and slung their arms around each other’s shoulders.

”Full time,” the commentator closed out.

”And Wigan Athletic are in the Championship playoff final. They will go to Wembley having done this the hard way, which seems to be the only way this club knows. Their opponents will be confirmed tomorrow after the other semi-final concludes.”

”But tonight belongs to them.”

...

Noah had just gotten off the phone when he leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling.

The call had lasted four minutes and forty seconds and had been about something that some years ago would have felt like background noise.

A routine conversation between two people in the business.

Nothing headline worthy.

But he was smiling about it.

”Never thought I’d be this happy about something so small,” he said to the room.

He sat with that for a second with the feeling before his mind drifted to the reason for his rebound.

”That kid has made things fun again.”

At that remark, his phone buzzed on the desk.

He turned towards and double-tapped it without picking it up.

Just as he did, a notification lit the screen.

Luton [0] — [2] Wigan8 :(1-3)

The smile got wider and wider as he stared at the notification.

Then it levelled off.

His business brain, the part that never fully switched off regardless of the occasion, started doing what it always did when results like this came in.

It began running the numbers.

It began thinking about what this meant for the summer and what it meant for certain conversations that were already waiting to happen.

He looked at the notification a moment longer.

Then he set the phone face down on the desk before moving away from the desk.

The day after the win felt like a Sunday even though it wasn’t.

The Wigan fan pages and forums that had been running hot since the final whistle hadn’t really cooled by morning or afternoon, for that matter.

Most of it was joy, and for the current Wigan fans, it wasn’t that hard to find.

At the moment, they could find a lot of things to be happy about, and one of those things was what the club’s own youths had been doing all season.

Someone put it simply in a post that got shared around more than most.

Chris Sze was already here. Then Leo came and changed everything. Then Ezra got his chance. Now Jake scores on his debut to put us in the playoff final. Where are these kids coming from?

The replies underneath agreed in various ways, and a few of them mentioned Dawson, which was fair.

One of the names mentioned, Leo, was already in the building by the time most of his teammates were still in bed.

The two days off Dawson had given the squad applied to everyone except the situation that followed him around like a shadow, and so while the complex sat quiet around him, he walked the hallways toward the medical wing with his kit bag over one shoulder and his phone in his other hand.

The physio room had two of the Wigan medical staff already set up when he got there, and Dr Navarro was standing by the window with a coffee, looking like a man who had been there for a while.

”Leo,” he said, turning.

”Doctor.”

Navarro looked at him for a moment, then walked forward to sit, offering Leo too a seat.

”How are you feeling?”

”Good,” Leo said. ”A bit stiff but nothing serious.”

Navarro’s mouth did something that wasn’t quite a smile.

”I don’t trust that from you anymore.”

Leo grinned despite himself, knowing what Navarro was talking about.

”That was one time.”

”You played on a bad hamstring, Leo, despite my warning”, Navarro said, setting his coffee down.

”One time covers a lot of ground. As for Dawson, he’s already heard enough from me, so I won’t push.”

Leo said nothing to that, which was probably the most honest response available.

A while later, the examination table was ready, and Leo climbed onto it, letting the specialist get to work.

Navarro and the two Wigan doctors moved through their checks methodically, hands pressing, bending, rotating, their expressions giving nothing away for most of it.

Leo stared at the ceiling most of the time and answered their questions.

Occasionally, he tried to read their faces but got nothing useful back.

Then, almost half an hour later, Navarro straightened up.

”Almost there,” he said.

”The tissue is responding well. Another week or so of managed activity and we’re looking at full clearance.”

Leo sat up.

”So I’m close.”

”Close,” Navarro confirmed.

”Which means you don’t do anything stupid between now and then. I won’t have to emphasise that since you’ve done well up until this point!”

He said it, looking directly at Leo, which made it clear he wasn’t speaking generally.

Leo nodded and got off the table as Navarro pointed him toward the recovery room without further discussion, and Leo went, working through the protocols one room at a time, the pool and then the table and then the massage room at the end of it, until Navarro finally let him go.

His unit felt smaller than usual when he got back to it, or maybe he was just more tired than he’d expected to be.

He dropped his bag and went to the small kitchen and put together the kind of meal that nutritionists would have opinions about.

Biscoff spread, cold cocoa and eggs that he scrambled quickly and ate standing up because the table felt too far away.

When he was done, he sat down, picked up his phone and started scrolling, ready to laze around, but a minute later, his thoughts began to run amok once he met a post.

”What the—” he started, but didn’t finish as he kept staring at the words on his screen.

....

The following morning, the Wigan complex, which was supposed to be quiet, was buzzing, and very so.

The players filtered in with the expressions of people who had been expecting one more day of rest and had been told on short notice that the situation had changed.

Some of them were still carrying coffee from outside, but the stares from the matrons made them toss it away.

Dawson stood in front of them on the training pitch and waited until the murmuring settled.

”The FA Cup final has been moved,” he said. ”Usually it’s moved backwards, but this time, it’s the opposite. The day for our date with the English Premier League champions is now the sixteenth of May.”

”Manchester City made the Champions League final, which means they need all the preparation time for that. So the FA moved our game forward to accommodate that, and the playoff final takes the original date for the FA cup final.” He looked around the group. ”Which means we have four days.”

Nobody spoke.

”I would not have accepted it since we bear the brunt of it, but they’ve promised the people at the top some compensation, and that’s why they’ve kept quiet,” Dawson said, causing the players to laugh.

”Four days to prepare for Manchester City. And then the playoff final after that.” He paused. ”So that’s where we are. Any questions?”

There weren’t any, or rather, there were plenty, but nobody felt like asking them out loud.

”Good,” Dawson said as he turned towards the other coaches.

”Let’s get to work.”