Saturday 4 October 2025, 3pm

Vale Park, Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent

12:35pm, The Bulls Head. The ale is a beautiful autumnal amber, the talk is loose, and suddenly they’re here — the visitors, the wanderers from Northampton, that town of stitched hides and stitched histories. A place where boots were born from cowhide, Charles Bradlaugh refused the oath, Pickering Phipps poured pints, Watchmen watched, Jazz was butchered, Bela Lugosi died, and a clown went viral like a fever dream.

The shoemakers roll in with spirits high — four wins from five in the league.  We’re riding our own wave, three straight, hearts thumping like engines on the M6. Something has to give. The pitch is the proving ground, and the gods of football are flipping coins in the floodlights.

We talk of shared heroes, of men who wore both shirts and scars. Marc Richards — the original Rico — the striker who danced with December red cards like they were old flames, scoring goals with the same reckless love. Ian Taylor, midfield poet with boots full of thunder and grace. And Lee Collins — oh, Lee — who stared into the abyss and found no echo. A soul lost in the static. Men and mental health. Don’t ever stop talking.

1:45pm, The horn blows and the team news drops; No Funso, no Rhys Walters, Shipley starts, Croasdale on the bench. It makes no sense, it worked last week but it still does not make any sense to us.

2:15pm, glasses drained and we’re on the move, drifting left across St. John’s Square, turning right,  past the old Town Hall — that stone sentinel of forgotten speeches — crossing the road, past the Wedgewood Big House, left up Hamil Road – we pass the bloke selling “The Beano”, the burger van – calling like a siren with its grease and onions and flesh and memory, Andy at his pulpit — “Derek, I’m Gutted” — still preaching for a pound, still holy. Across the car park we go, through the fanzone, into Tommy’s — a pint, a piss, a smile, a nod, “Ay up!” to the familiar faces, the Vale faithful, the theatre crowd.

And why do we do all this? It’s simple. It’s our drug, our beautiful madness, the ache in our bones and the fire in our chests — we march along the cracked pavements of Burslem with eyes wide open, chasing the next fix of glory or heartbreak or both, because this fever is ours and we don’t want the cure, never wanted it, not once — we want the sweat and the chants, we want the roar and the silence, the sacred suffering of the terraces – because in this delirium we are alive, we are together, we are Vale.

We are ready.  We are here. The curtain is about to rise.

The final whistle blew like a tired sigh from the gods of football, and the crowd, half-drunk on hope and half-numb from ninety seven minutes of maybe, shuffled out into the Burslem dusk. Port Vale 0, Northampton Town 0. The beautiful game, she’s fickle, she’s cruel, she’s a lover who forgets your name just when you need her most.

And Ruari — ah, Ruari — he had it, 96 minutes, the moment, the glint, the golden thread dangling from the heavens. One swing, one breath, one heartbeat too slow. If he buries it, Vale Park erupts, the songs spill into the streets, and the night becomes legend.

But he didn’t.

The match ends, but the ache lingers — not in defeat, but in the absence of triumph. That’s the thing about 0-0: it’s not nothing. It’s everything that could’ve been.

Next Saturday we roll into the capital. Wimbledon away.