The board goes up – six minutes. Six. Added. Minutes. And I swear something inside me just snaps like an old elastic band that’s been left in the sun too long. I’m done. Absolutely shredded. Head gone, legs gone, soul halfway out of my body. Six minutes to cling onto the lead that Ben Waine gifted us back in the 28th minute, the Waine Train thundering in out of nowhere – because let’s be honest, I never booked a ticket earlier in the season, that train wasn’t going anywhere, stuck in the sidings with the engine off – but this is the Jon Brady revolution now, and suddenly Waine is a completely different footballer, a machine, a presence, a moment waiting to happen.

And then there’s Funso. Funso! Out there bossing the midfield like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Funso who I’d quietly packed off in my head months ago, Funso who’s thrown his toys around before, Funso who has spent entire spells looking like he’d rather be anywhere else but here – and yet here he is, grafting, fighting, looking like he’d bleed black and white if you cut him open. I can’t process it.

Sunderland have completely run out of ideas now – it’s just hopeful, desperate balls lumped forward, one after another, like someone chucking buckets of water at a house fire that’s already burned itself out. And our defence just eats it all up. Rock solid, immovable, heads on everything, bodies in the way of everything else.

Kyle John – don’t get me started. I didn’t even blink when they made him Captain, didn’t give it a second thought until suddenly there he was with the armband and somehow it just made sense. A natural leader, pure heart on legs, throwing himself into every duel like he’s trying to win back lost years or something. Every player out there in black and white, every single one of them, they’re heroes tonight. Proper heroes.

And there are still six minutes left. Six minutes. I can’t breathe

And we wait. Because the story hasn’t ended. Because there is still time for all this to be ripped away from us. Because we know life is cruel, because we know life wants nothing more than to offer us beauty before snatching it away.

And we’re not watching football anymore, we’re bargaining with the universe. We’re summoning every superstition we’ve ever clung to: hanging on to the belief that sheer willpower from the stands might somehow push a loose ball away from danger. We rehearse disaster before it arrives. I’m losing it, everyone around me is losing it.

And still we wait. Hearts tight. Voices hoarse. Electricity surging through every fibre of our entire being. Eyes fixed on the pitch but seeing something larger – our history, our scars, our need for this fragile lead to become something permanent. Because anticipation, at Vale, is never gentle. It’s a cliff edge we stand on together, praying the ground holds long enough for us to feel joy without the cliff collapsing beneath our feet. We are screaming for full-time.

And finally it arrives. The final whistle.

And the universe just… detonates. Time doesn’t stop – it shatters. Everything becomes noise and colour and limbs. You don’t celebrate; you explode. You’re not a person anymore, you’re a flare going off in the sky. Strangers are grabbing you, screaming into your ear, and you’re grabbing back because for those few delirious seconds you’re all part of the same mad eruption, the same cosmic burst of pure, unrepeatable joy. The pitch looks different, the sky looks different, the noise isn’t a noise anymore – it’s a physical force. It comes up through the concrete, through your trainers, through your ribs. It’s like someone’s ripped open a curtain inside your chest and let all the light in at once. Your throat burns from a scream you didn’t realise you’d released.  You cling to whoever’s closest, because in moments like this you’re not a single person; you’re part of a vast collective heartbeat stretching from the Paddock to the Hamil to Lorne Street. It feels like too much, like reality has torn at the seams, like you’re in a state of existence where nothing outside this very moment has ever mattered or ever will.

It’s a release so huge it washes through you like a wave breaking clean over your head. You look around and every single person is suspended in the same spell – eyes wide, arms in the air, mouths hanging open like they’ve just glimpsed something beyond comprehension. Euphoria. Shock. Disbelieving delight. That sense that everything in your life, every heartbreak, every train journey, every freezing Tuesday night has been pointing at this.

And, d’you know what? Maybe that’s all any of us ever need: a moment that cuts right through the dull, relentless noise of life to remind us we’re still capable of feeling deeply. Port Vale, in its chaotic, improbable way, gave us that. Especially when nobody expected us to win. Especially when we weren’t meant to.

Because now and then, the universe slips us a glimmer of the divine – a thrill that lands so precisely, so perfectly, it feels crafted just for you. A moment that whispers: Here. Hold this. Remember what it feels like to be alive.