Harbinger Of Glory

They weren’t done, but four days later, it was starting to feel over for the Wigan fans.

The DW was almost like a mortuary, save for the celebrations of the away Burnley fans.

The home crowd felt flat because they felt and knew that they might have possibly let something slip away.

”They needed one win,” the commentator said with a sigh, almost like he was tired of the highs and the lows that the Wigan fans were facing despite not even being one himself.

”One win, or even a draw, and Wigan would have secured their playoff place with a game to spare. Instead, they are back to square one. The pressure they lifted two games ago has returned, and it has brought company.”

On the pitch, Leo was still on the ground where he’d ended up in the final passage of play, one knee down, head up and eyes on the Jumbotron where the scoreline sat.

2-1.

They had faced Burnley, who had come into the game in first place, champions of the division and with promotion already secured, and they had still come to the DW and made Wigan feel every inch of the gap.

Though not without being made to work for it.

”Credit where it’s due,” the co-commentator said. ”Wigan did not lie down tonight. They made the best team in this division uncomfortable for long stretches, and there were moments in that second half where you genuinely felt that another goal was coming from the home side!”

It had started so well.

In the forty-third minute, Leo collected the ball, twenty-five yards from goal, and after a dribbling run that had taken him past two Burnley midfielders, shifted it onto his left foot and drove it low across the keeper before the latter could set himself.

The DW had gone up, and for a while it had seemed like the night might go Wigan’s way.

Then Burnley won a penalty ten minutes later, a foul on the edge of the area that the referee pointed to the spot without hesitation, and just like that, it was level.

Wigan pushed, created, came close twice in the final quarter through chances that deserved better than they got, and then the ninety-third minute arrived.

Bennet, tracking a cross into the box, left his arm out for balance, and the ball found his hand at the worst possible angle.

The referee’s whistle sounded after that, and the DW dropped into silence.

Burnley converted.

And that was that.

Wigan even tried a last-ditch effort, but the whistle blew before they could finish that.

And now on the pitch, Leo got to his feet slowly and walked toward the touchline, the Jumbotron still visible above him if he chose to look at it, which he didn’t.

Dawson was waiting there.

”Chin up,” he said, and put a hand briefly on Leo’s shoulder. ”We did everything we could tonight.”

Leo nodded, but the nod was mostly automatic because the honest version of what he was thinking was something else entirely.

He’d played the full ninety, which his body had opinions about, and even then he’d felt like half a player for most of it.

The right leg was there for passing and not much else.

The goal had come from his left, driven before the keeper could get himself right, and he knew that a goalkeeper with half a second more would have kept it out.

He hadn’t done everything he could.

He’d done everything he could currently, which wasn’t the same thing.

He said none of this to Dawson and just walked past him toward the tunnel.

”So it seems that it all comes down to the final day,” the commentator said from the gantry as the Wigan players began walking off the pitch and the stands emptied.

”Wigan Athletic against Swansea City. Here, at the DW. Win, and they’re in. Anything less and they are relying on results elsewhere.”

”It’s just one game now and everything still to play for. The DW will have its moment, one way or another.”

....

The team sheet dropped an hour before kickoff, and the news moved through the crowd the way news does on matchdays.

Leo wasn’t starting.

There was grumbling, the natural reaction, but it didn’t have the usual heat behind it because four days ago, Dawson had stood in front of the cameras after the Burnley game and said it plainly.

The boy played ninety minutes on a leg that shouldn’t have seen thirty.

He would be on the bench against Swansea, or he wouldn’t be in the squad at all, and that was the end of the conversation.

The grumbling settled into something more like reluctant understanding.

Outside the DW, a fan in a blue scarf pulled his collar up against the April wind and looked at the stadium ahead of him.

”Just need this one,” he said to nobody in particular, or maybe to the building itself. ”Just let this one go our way.”

And then he turned and walked through the turnstile.

.....

”Final day,” the commentator said, as the teams emerged from the tunnel.

”And at the DW Stadium, Wigan Athletic know exactly what is required. Win, and they are in the playoffs. Drop points and they are at the mercy of other results, other grounds, other teams who have their own reasons for winning today.”

”It’s Declaration Day or public execution. There is no middle ground here.”

When the game started, Wigan came out of the blocks with the urgency of a team that had been waiting all week to get back on the pitch, and from his seat on the bench, Leo read the Swansea players in the opening minutes and felt something in his chest loosen slightly.

They weren’t at it.

Whether it was the occasion or the end of a long season or simply a bad day, Swansea had the look of a team going through motions they hadn’t fully committed to.

Wigan pressed that, and pressed it hard.

Fletcher went close in the eighth minute, Aasgaard hit the side netting in the twenty-second, and the DW responded to each chance as if lives depended on it, and that wasn’t false.

By the half-hour mark, Wigan had nine shots, four on target, and nothing to show for any of it.

The crowd began doing what crowds do when chances go begging.

Shifting in seats.

Looking at the clock and generating a specific kind of nervous energy that players on the pitch can feel through the soles of their boots.

Halftime came and went with the scoreline still blank, and the DW filed back to their seats for the second half, carrying the particular anxiety of people who had been promised something and were starting to wonder when that would come.

Then McClean went in on a Swansea winger in the fifty-third minute, late and mistimed, and the referee didn’t hesitate.

Red card.

The DW went silent for a moment that felt longer than it was.

A

”Oh no! And somehow,” the commentator said, with the measured disbelief of someone watching a bad day find another gear, ”it has gotten worse. James McClean, ten men, and Wigan still need a goal. I’m not sure this script could get any more complicated if it tried.”

Dawson reorganised without panic, pulling the shape tighter, finding the balance between defending what they had and still threatening what they needed, and for twenty minutes Wigan held.

Then the seventy-fifth minute arrived, and Dawson turned to his bench where Leo was already pulling his bib off, together with Ezra.

The DW saw him before the fourth official raised the board, and instantly, the relief could be heard.

He and Ezra stepped onto the touchline and waited for the signal, which came a moment later.

”Leo Calderon,” the commentator said, ”And Ezra Ryhs, both kids coming on to see if it’s in the stars for their team!”

”One is born and bred, and the other is a young boy who has been a revelation this season. And now, with one bad leg and a prayer, Dawson is sending that young boy out there with fifteen minutes to save Wigan’s season.”

A brief pause came after that, followed by a small nervous chuckle from the commentary.

”No pressure,”