Harbinger Of Glory

”And then there were four,” came the commentary as the players settled into their respective positions on the pitch.

”Four games. Four opportunities for Wigan Athletic to confirm what they’ve been building toward all season. The FA Cup final is already booked. The question now is whether they can secure playoff football to go with it, and starting tonight, at the DW, against Reading, they begin to answer that.”

His partner nodded beside him.

”The table doesn’t lie. Sixth place. Still just a point above the team in seventh. Every game from here is like a final in its own right.”

The DW was loud in the way it gets because the crowd understood the stakes and were going to do their hardest to will their team over the finish line.

Twenty-four thousand people who had watched this team grind through a season that had no right to be still alive, and here they were, four games from the end, still in it.

”Let’s hope it goes as the fans expect,” the commentary said as the referee blew his whistle.

And from the whistle, it was clear that Dawson’s boys were going to put their lives on the line.

Reading didn’t come to lie down, but whatever they threw at Wigan felt futile.

Defenders threw their bodies and faces in the way of the ball in attempts to clear it when the Reading players shot, but they didn’t take it lying down.

They also improved dramatically as the game went on, and eventually, the first goal came in the thirty-first minute.

McClean, cutting inside from the left with the ball and the conviction of a man who had already decided, drove it low across the face of goal and Fletcher was there at the back post, redirecting it into the corner with the kind of finish that looks easy until you consider how many players couldn’t have made that run at that moment or how many players had wasted efforts from even closer than that.

The DW went up at that, celebratory that they had struck first.

”It’s Fletcher again this time with a goal to break the deadlock. One-nil, and the DW Stadium is alive.”

The players mobbed him in the corner, Fletcher at the bottom of it, and the noise stayed for a long time after.

After the restart, Wigan proved stable, weathering every storm that came from Reading and even after they returned from halftime, it was beginning to look like Wigan would get another goal.

But against the run of play, Reading equalised in the sixtieth minute, after a set piece that Wigan defended poorly, found a head at the near post that Ben Amos had no answer for.

The goal brought a silence to the DW as the certainty in grabbing all three points dropped.

Dawson didn’t move from his spot on the touchline.

He just watched the opposition’s celebration before turning towards the Wigan bench, and some five minutes later, Leo was on the pitch running amok.

It was almost like they couldn’t handle his turns or his passes because whenever he had the ball, Wigan looked relaxed and miles better than the team they were before he came on.

The barrage from Wigan increased and increased until Leo received the ball thirty yards from goal, turned, and hit it.

The shot had the distance right but not the height, and so a reading defender got in front and blocked the ball, but he might as well have left it alone because the ball dropped and sat up perfectly in front of Aasgaard, who was already arriving and didn’t need a second invitation to smash it into the top corner.

”Aasgaard. The deflection falls to him, and he has made absolutely no mistake. Two one, seventy-first minute, and the DW erupts.”

The fans in the home end were on their feet and staying there, and Aasgaard was already running towards the corner with his arms out, Wigan blue streaming behind him, and the bench emptying in celebration before anyone told them to stop.

Wigan managed the remaining twenty minutes afterwards, and when the final whistle came, the relief in the stadium almost felt like a physical thing.

”It’s full time. Wigan Athletic take all three points and the pressure, for one night at least, releases its grip.”

The commentator paused.

”But only for one night. Because next up is Stoke City, away, and Wigan cannot afford to think this is done. One game at a time. That’s all this is.”

And four days later, at the Bet365 Stadium, Wigan met Stoke City.

Stoke sat sixteenth, safe from relegation, with nothing left to play for except pride and the kind of professional dignity that keeps managers in work.

Wigan had everything to play for.

And from the first minute, Leo played like he knew it.

It was his first start since before the hamstring, and whatever had been held back across the substitute appearances, whatever he’d been managing and conserving, was gone now.

He arranged the midfield the way you arrange a room before guests arrive, everything in its place.

Alongside him, Tiehi proved to be an effective workhorse, making clearances and closing gaps in whatever direction Leo pointed in and together, the two of them controlled the space above the defence with a fluency that Stoke’s midfield simply couldn’t match.

”Calderon starting tonight,” the commentator noted early. ”And you can already see the difference. Wigan look like a different team when he’s on the ball from the first whistle.”

The first goal came through Fletcher again, twenty-two minutes in, after Wigan’s press won the ball high up the pitch and the striker did whatever strikers did when they had space in front of goal, and time to match.

The second arrived before halftime, after Tiehi met the ball on the volley from the edge of the area and sent it through a crowd of bodies and into the net.

”Power. What a strike. Two-nil and Wigan are out of sight already.”

The third was Leo’s.

Not a goal, but the pass that made it after Wigan won a corner in the sixty-eighth minute, and instead of swinging it into the box he cut it short, drew two Stoke players toward him, and then bent it back across to the far post where Broadhead, only recently returned from his own injury, met it with his head and nodded it down and in.

Broadhead wheeled away with Leo and the rest of the Wigan team jogging behind him, while the small pocket of Wigan supporters in the away end made as much noise as their numbers allowed.

”Broadhead, and that is three. Leo Calderon with the corner, and what a ball it was. This boy makes everything around him work better, and he’s proved once again why they value him so much.”

Without conviction even before the start of the game, Stoke City did honest work and stopped Wigan from scoring again, but the consolation never came as the referee blew the whistle after added time.

”Back-to-back wins,” the commentator said as the players went around applauding the away fans and shaking hands with their opponents.

”And Wigan have moved themselves into fifth place, two points clear of sixth. But two points is nothing in this division, and they know it. One more win, perhaps even a draw, and they keep themselves in the playoff places with two games still to play, but until then, the job is not done. Not even close.”