"That’s it."

"What’s it?"

"It's over. Harris is being removed."

"Oh, come on? How do you know that? Did you talk to the Big Boss?"

"Yes. I honestly explained to him that I didn't want to be a rat and couldn't work with the blokes without the old man. That today there was nothing better than Harris for the team. I told him that we have gained momentum and do not need to break anything."

"What about him?"

"Well, what about him… You know. If he's got the reins under his tail, there's nothing you can do about it. Generally speaking Harris is not permanent."

"That's disgusting. That’s bad."

"Too bad," Martin agreed. "I don't know what to do now…"

"When will it be announced?"

"Tomorrow, before the match."

"Wankers…"

"Yeah."

At Exeter, I was checking out a bloke to play as a fullback. He was a tough Irishman, aggressive and mean but for serious work still a little green. Losing his head he picked up yellow cards during the season. So in this match he got his "sick leave". Although he must be given his due, he always sees everything on the pitch and was good during the selection process, true that was by Exeter City standards. I'll have to watch him a couple more times. It would be interesting to watch him in the cup, against a stronger team than the one from Oxford.

It was almost midnight when I got back to London and I immediately fell asleep. In the morning, I had twenty-nine thousand new messages on my smartphone.

As soon as I read the first one, the phone rang.

"Alex, you owe me one." It was O’Grady, "What's going on at the club? Are they filming Harris?"

"Sean, bloody hell, I just got up. I got in really late last night."

"Alex, stop whining!" He was insistent. "You know if it's true, I should write about it first!"

"Sean, what are you talking about? We’re on the way up, they have never been in better form and the blokes are ready to carry the old man in their arms. What possible dismissal?"

"Bloody hell, Alex. You are a real arse!" He didn't seem to believe me.

It looked like it was going to be a hot day. It was worth getting ready. I had a couple of whiskies at breakfast. I took a taxi right to the stadium as it was better not to go to the base.

Our bus arrived at the stadium forty minutes earlier than it was supposed to and I have never seen anything more heart breaking in my life than the way our blokes crawled out of it. Iron Mikey led them to this match as a playing coach and neither Harris nor Johnny Martin was with the team.

I didn't go to the locker room as I had nothing to do there. I walked around in the stands, met a few friends from the club, and talked to them about Harris. One of the doctors told me that Johnny also seemed to have refused to stay on with the coaching staff, although this may have been a rumour. I watched the warm-up from the bench. The blokes were running around nervous and they were all wound up. It was like there were electric shocks in the air. Something was going to happen.

From the very beginning of the game, the pitch was covered with smoke, one of our loudmouths lit something which produced serious smoke and in response the hooligans from Cardiff lit their own flares. They must get them into the stadium in their arses, I thought, for me it was always a mystery. As far as I could see no one actually watched the football match for the first twenty or even thirty minutes. The stands roared with curses at the Welsh and the guest sector kept pace. In general it was just the usual thing for such matches and that was mostly what any decent audience was going to watch. After all you can't really watch football when there is such line-up as Millwall vs Cardiff City. It was definitely not Barcelona vs. Real Madrid.