The evening will arrive not with fanfare, but with a kind of soft indifference. A Tuesday, perhaps. Or a Wednesday. The days blur. The floodlights blink themselves awake, casting long shadows across the emptying car parks and the slow shuffle of boots on concrete. We — the Valiants — arrive. Not in droves, but in drizzles. A smattering. A whisper of devotion.

Leeds United U21s. The Vertu Trophy. A fixture so slight, so feather-light in consequence, that even the trophy itself — if it could think, if it could feel — might wonder why it was ever forged. A bauble in a cabinet no one visits. A name on a list no one reads.

And yet, despite the experience of this peculiar nothingness, we turn up.

I think of fitted sheets, those rebellious things that refuse to be folded, always slipping from grasp, mocking the idea of order. I think of strangers on the internet, locked in combat over nothing, over pixels and pride. I think of cutlery polished for microwave meals, gleaming in the face of futility. And I think of this game. This night. This ritual.

Devante Cole, perhaps, will be kicked and bruised by boys not yet men, their boots too big, their ambition too sharp. He will limp, maybe. He will falter. And we will wince. Because this is not the stage for him. This is not the moment. This is rehearsal. This is understudy. This is the echo of a play that will never be performed. It belongs to those who find themselves on the fringe. Is Sam Hart still here?, murmurs a voice.

So why do we care?

Why do we water plants destined to die? Why do we keep receipts for things we’ll never return? Why do we iron socks?

Because meaning is not always grand. It is not always loud. Sometimes it is found in the granular. In the act of showing up. In the absurd repetition of things that do not matter, until they do.

There is nobility in the pointless. A quiet defiance.  A whisper that says: I know this doesn’t matter, but I’m here anyway.

And maybe that is football. Not the glory. Not the silverware. But the persistence. The stubborn hope. The belief that something might happen. That something might change. That tonight, under these indifferent lights, in front of these few hundred faithful, something might flicker.

We play. We shout. We believe.

Because if we can find meaning in the Vertu Trophy, then perhaps we can find it anywhere. In the folding. In the arguing. In the polishing. In the turning up. In the getting out of bed on those days when it just does not seem possible.

And in that, we are not foolish. We are not lost.

We are alive.