In the 18th minute, we struck first. It was a goal of pure, breathtaking beauty, a goal that encapsulated everything we had become. Nya Kirby, a picture of calm authority in the heart of midfield, won the ball with a perfectly timed tackle and laid it off to Eze.
Eze, our magician, our artist, turned on a sixpence, leaving his marker for dead, and drove forward into the space. He drew two defenders towards him and then, with a deft, no-look pass, he slipped the ball to Michael Olise on the right wing.
Olise took one touch to control it, and then, with a shimmy and a burst of pace, he beat his man and whipped in a vicious, inswinging cross. And there, rising highest at the back post, was Connor Blake, a raging bull of a man, who met the ball with a header of such ferocious power that it almost ripped the net from the goal.
1-0. The stadium erupted.
