There’s nothing quite like a 96th‑minute equaliser to make the soul tremble with joy. And that noise that came from the Bycars as Martin Sherif wheeled away – that deafening silence from those travellers from Reading – music to my ears. A wonderful moment.

This isn’t a case of happy‑clapping. It wasn’t a great performance by any stretch (although the second half certainly saw improvement), it wasn’t a performance that whispered anything about turning ships or tides or fortunes. But that doesn’t matter to me anymore. I’ve accepted relegation. I’m at peace with it. It’s not disconnection, it’s a simple shift of perspective. Nietzsche’s Amor Fati – embrace your misery and suffering he told us, it’s the only way you’ll ever overcome it.

From now until the end of the season it’s the little joys that will occupy me, because why not? I’ve endured the suffering, I’ve swallowed the inevitability, and I can’t affect a single thing about this dimal season. So I’ll take whatever scraps are thrown my way. I’ll savour the tiny, soul‑lifting moments that remind you Vale are always capable of surprising you, even when the bigger picture is bleak.

And those Reading fans – their worlds torn apart in the sixth minute of stoppage time. Glorious. Petty, yes. But when there’s food on the table, you feast. You don’t ask where it came from. You don’t question the portion size. You just eat, and for a brief, beautiful moment, you feel full.

And there were other small mercies too, the sort you only notice when you’ve stopped expecting anything grand. Joe Gauci’s kicking, for instance – a man who’s spent most of the season striking a football like he’s got jazz hands for feet, sending each goal-kick off on its own spiritual journey into the Lorne Street Stand – somehow managing to keep the thing on the pitch. Andre Gray’s mum can rest easy as well; his kit won’t need washing, just fold it up and pop it straight back in his PE bag. And in that last ten minutes we actually had a go, didn’t we. Didn’t slouch into resignation, didn’t let the script write itself. We pushed, we probed, we pretended for a moment that fate might blink. And it did.

In the end, that’s the quiet gift of accepting our fate: the world stops feeling like a verdict and starts looking like a place again. Once you stop fighting the inevitable, you notice the beauty that’s been humming in the background all along – the floodlights towering over Hamil Road, Lemmy and his bass guitar, the chatter and laughter drifting out of those Burslem pubs, the angel watching over us all, the sublime taste of that first pint of Titanic ale, the tears shed by  opposition fans, the way a hopeless season can still throw up a moment that puts a big smile on your face.

Relegation or not, misery or not, there’s still joy scattered everywhere if you’re willing to look for it. And maybe that’s the whole point. When you finally stop demanding meaning from football, it hands you something better, much better – a fleeting, fragile kind of grace that makes all this suffering feel, if not completely worthwhile, then at least bearable.