Away game. Under lights.

There is nothing up here, save for the house where they could remake The Shining as Cymru Noir. Perhaps birds hide in the light brown grass; perhaps the ghosts of the Knights Templar range the featureless moorland-undulations on spirit horses. The low sun floods Ysbyty Ifan. If you were so disposed, you could be given to such effusions as would drown romantics in longing. It is a singular place, this. Mile after mile of melancholia – fitting then, for what we are about to endure…

Gauge the chips. Win. Gauge the ground. Tick. Raffle ticket? Yes. A pound pressed into the palm of the volunteer. It all helps.

The signs are there on and off the park. Sideshow kids shout at each other. Harmless. Then, fifteen minutes in, a new conductor arrives to wave his baton. A player; an orchestrator of grim. The band strike up. It’s scrappy. Discord. The flux of too much of this and too much of that; too much juice, too much yearning. Same as it ever was. Stewards try. Fail. The lad in the blue puffer jacket at the front throws coin after coin. Are they pounds? What’s he thinking? He’s not. Is he? Fuck. Imagine being him. Sad. Throwing his money away, too. His mam loves him. The Police arrive. Trussed in hi-vis, wondering why they’ve been called away from other duties, they’re not formidable. More just ‘there’. If only two of them had been ‘there’ at the start. ‘Intelligence’? Not much.

And a flare. Why?

You can’t have a party without a flare? Fuck’s sake. You can. Well, I have, at least. Tell you what. Next time you throw a flare, chuck us the money for the fine at the same time. That’s the money that volunteers raise standing there in the rain. Selling raffle tickets. Oh and if you want to chat about it, come and find me. Seriously. You can explain the concept of chucking flares and I’ll explain why it’s a fucking stupid thing to do. Jesus.

This is either the biggest pitch I’ve ever seen, or cleaning my glasses this afternoon has revealed corners of the universe that were hitherto hidden from view. It’s so big that the liner is unable to distinguish the hands from the hips. An ‘unnatural’ handball in the box passes; the weirdest offside decision since the rule was introduced in 1883 baffles, and having awarded a corner, the ref changes his mind screaming “my mistake, my mistake, my mistake”, as though he needs help to resolve a deeply buried subconscious guilt. What did he do all those years ago? Whatever it was, he might have felt it, but he wouldn’t have seen it…

We are gathered here to watch this.

We watch shithouses shithouse; we watch sulkers sulk; feigners feign; strugglers struggle; we listen to anguished cries in response to challenges that are as physical as the powderiest puff, and we wonder. They’re better than us tonight…

It ends. Restrained behind the Thin Hi-Vis Line, the local youths prepare for their imminent dispersal order. They’ve been a nuisance for weeks, apparently. Kicking residents’ doors. Their mams love them. The jackals left early. Vacuous coke-heads heading for the coast celebrating weird shit that no one cares about. We file out; muted farewells are exchanged. It’s time for some of these lads to stop believing their own myths – on and off the park.

On the way back over the pitch-black hills, we pass ‘the house’. Dim lights around the edges of pulled curtains. Do the occupants have a shotgun behind the door? Perhaps the ref grew up there…

We mark performances, discuss players and formations, and the three of us begin to refill the cup of optimism. That’s what it does to you. The game. That’s why you go. You look for possibilities, hang on to your hopes, wrestle yourself to a new rationale when in your gut, you just know…

Or do you?