Saturday 13 September 2025, St. James Park, Exeter.

There are no epiphanies in the rain. No great awakenings in the grind of a long away day. But sometimes, in the quiet moments after a win – a real, hard-earned win – you feel something stir. not enlightenment, perhaps, but a kind of peace. A stillness. A glimpse of Satori.

Our two-nil victory at Exeter wasn’t beautiful. It was not a game for the poets. But it was honest. And in that honesty, there was something profound.

We clocked in, we clocked out. Two goals before the break — one a gift from Exeter’s obsession with playing out from the back, Byers intercepts, Paton delivers, the other a moment of clarity — A misstep from Exeter, a touch from Paton, and Devante Cole was gone, like a man breaking free from the weight of the world. By halftime, the work was done, though the shift was not yet over. A second half of discipline, of shape, of saying: you shall not pass.

It took eight games to get here. Eight games of frustration, of defensive lapses, of wondering when the tide would turn. But at St James Park, we saw something different. A team that remembered how to graft. Defenders who defended. A squad that understood that sometimes, the only way out is through.

Steinbeck once wrote that “a man with a torturing itch for writing has no remedy but to write.” Perhaps the same is true of footballers and winning. You can’t talk your way into form. You can’t philosophise your way up the table. You have to work. You have to suffer. You have to earn it.

Hard work does not always bring reward. But sometimes, when the wind is right and the ground is firm, it does.