Chapter 274: Bramall Lane III

On 54 Murphy lost the ball in the centre circle. Their winger ran at Kettle down our left. Kettle went with him for 30 yards and reached the byline a step behind him, and the cross came back across the 6-yard box to a man nobody had picked up. tap.

2-0.

"WAKE UP!" somebody in our end screamed, loud enough to carry to the box. "WAKE UP, TOWN!"

Maguire won every ball in the air in our box for 10 minutes and it made no difference at all, because the second ball went to them every time.

"Your number 6 is the best player on the pitch," the old director said.

"He was yours."

"He was." He did not take his eyes off him. "We had him from 7. He played in midfield for us till he was 16. Then somebody had the sense to move him back."

Sadler sent Kane on for Quinn on the hour.

On 68 Pett, who had put his hand up at 2 o’clock to ask about his money, went in on their forward just inside the box, a yard late, and caught his ankle. whack. The referee pointed at the spot. peep. Braithwaite went left. The ball went right.

3-0.

"EASY! EASY! EASY!" The Kop was on its feet.

The 2,600 sang the tide song louder at 3-0 than they had sung it at 0-0. "FROM THE SEAWALL TO THE BOVRIL!" It carried across the whole ground, under the Kop, and our players heard it.

Vardy turned to the away end and lifted both arms. boom of a drum from somewhere in the lower tier.

"RIYAD! FEET! FEET!" Kane had his hand up at the near post.

On 83 Mahrez went past their full-back on the outside for the first time all afternoon, reached the byline and pulled it back along the ground. Kane met it first time with the inside of his right foot, and it was in at the near post before the keeper had moved. swish.

3-1.

He did not celebrate. He ran into the net, picked the ball out, and ran it back to the centre circle with Vardy jogging beside him. In the life before, he scored 2 goals for Leicester that spring. This was his second for us.

The away end found his name. "HARRY KANE! HARRY KANE!"

peep. peep. peeeep.

My phone went before the players were off the pitch.

"7th, Sam," Priya said. Behind her the club shop radio was on, and the till. "4 to play. I am sorry. The coach firm has been on. They want to know if we still want 6 coaches for Portsmouth."

"Tell them yes."

At the whistle Maguire walked to the Kop on his own and clapped them. A few hundred clapped back. Others turned their backs and went up the steps.

He stood there until the last of it had stopped. Behind him, the whole time, the 2,600 were singing his name.

"MA-GUIRE! MA-GUIRE!"

I went down the stairs to the corridor under the stand. Stokes came out of the dressing room in his socks with a towel round his neck, on his way to the toilets, and stopped when he saw me.

"We were all thinking about money for 90 minutes, chairman," he said. "Me as well. Not one of us had our heads on."

"That one is mine, Dean. Not yours."

"It is all of ours on Tuesday," he said, and went on down the corridor.

Danny was waiting for me further along, outside the press room, with his notebook out and his phone in his other hand.

"You said Monday," he said. "Your man in the camel coat did not want to wait till Monday. He rang me at 12, before kick-off."

"Mahrez’s agent."

"He says your money did not come on Friday. He says the 4 contracts are not lodged."

Danny turned the phone over in his hand. "He has 3 Championship clubs on the phone about Mahrez, and he wants it in Monday’s paper. He as good as wrote it for me, Sam. He gave me the headline."

"Print it," I said. "It is true. Print all of it."

Danny looked at me over the notebook. "On Friday it was what you can."

"Everything that is the club’s, I can. Print all of that."

"Go on, then."

"4 contracts. 4 years each. Signed by me on the 28th of March. The money to pay for them is mine, and it was meant to land on Friday. It did not. Margaret will not lodge a contract against money that is not in the bank, and she is right not to."

He was writing. "Wages?"

"Nobody’s wages are late. Nobody at the club is owed a penny today, except those 4, by me. If we go up, the lads’ bonuses come out of the same money, and it will be there long before then."

"Where is the money?"

"In something of mine that takes time to turn into pounds."

"What something?"

"Mine. Not the club’s. Put that in."

"And when does it come?"

"It will be in the club’s account before they go out on Tuesday."

"And if it is not?"

"Then you print that as well."

"I would have anyway." He tapped the pen on the notebook. tap. "What did you tell them? Your players."

"That it is late, it is not gone, and every man gets what I signed."

"Can I have that?"

"It is what I said. Have it word for word."

He wrote it down. Then he closed the notebook and stood there with it in his hand.

"Your man in the coat will not like it," he said. "He wanted a chairman who would not come to the phone."

"Do not read it back to me on Sunday, Danny. Print it."

Stan came past us with the first of the skips. scrape of it along the corridor wall.

"Coach in 10," he said. "Has anybody seen young Maguire?"

Nobody had. Sadler put his head out of the dressing room and looked up the corridor, and then he looked at me.

"Find him for me, Sam," he said. "The coach goes at half past, with him or without him, and it is not going without him."

I went up the tunnel.

The ground was empty. The Kop was a wall of tipped-up seats and a man in a bib with a black bag, picking programmes off the steps. At the far end the sprinklers had come on over the goalmouth. tsss. tsss.

Maguire was standing on the halfway line in his amber training top with his wash bag still in his hand, looking up at the Kop. A boy from Mosborough in the wrong colours.

I stayed where I was, at the top of the tunnel. Everything I could have said to him was about money.

Footsteps came up the concrete behind me, uneven, one heavier than the other. Marsh, in his long coat, coming up the slope a step at a time.

"Leave him to me, chairman," he said.

He went out onto the grass. He walked slowly, because the knee would not let him walk any other way. When he got to Maguire he did not face him. He stood beside him and looked up at the Kop as well.

They stood there a long time. The sprinklers went round at the far end. tsss. tsss. I could not hear what Marsh said, and I do not think it was much. Maguire shook his head. Marsh waited.

Then he put his hand on the back of the boy’s neck and turned him round, and they walked back across the grass towards me together.

Maguire’s eyes were red. He stopped in front of me.

"Sorry, chairman," he said. "I made my debut on that. Half-time, against Cardiff."

"Coach, chairman," Marsh said, and walked him on up the tunnel with his hand still on his neck. Behind them the sprinklers went on turning over the empty grass.

Danny’s piece ran on the Monday.

TILBROOK GAZETTE · Monday 15 April 2013 · Page 3 TOWN’S 4 NEW CONTRACTS WAIT ON CHAIRMAN’S LATE MONEY By Danny Vine New 4-year contracts for Jamie Vardy, Riyad Mahrez, N’Golo Kanté and Harry Maguire have not been lodged with the Football League, because money that chairman Sam Mercer is putting into the club did not arrive on Friday as planned. Mr Mercer signed the contracts on 28 March. The club will not lodge them until the money is in its account. Mr Mercer said: "It is late. It is not gone. Every man gets what I signed." He told the Gazette the money will be in the club’s account before Tuesday’s home game. No wages at the club are affected. Promotion bonuses, due to the squad only if the club goes up, will be paid from the same money. Tilbrook lost 3-1 at Sheffield United on Saturday and are 7th with 4 games to play.

I paid for one at the paper shop by the station at 7.

"Seen yourself, Mr Mercer?" the man behind the counter said. "Page 3."

Terry Brennan was at the counter with his own copy already folded open at page 3, and he turned round with it in his hand.

"You?" he said. "Late?"

"Me."

"20 years I have hated every man who ever put money into a football club." He tapped the page on the counter. tap. "I made one exception, Sam. My name is on your shirts because of it."

"Tuesday, Terry."

"Do not make me wrong about you." He put the paper under his arm and held the door open for me.

On the Sunday night I had sent the same message to every buyer in London I could find who dealt in size and paid in pounds. One of them had answered at 2 in the morning.

The 8:12 came in. I got on with the Gazette, going to London to sell the thing I had held since the winter before last, to a stranger, and read his message again as we pulled out.

Monday, 11. Flat above the phone shop on the Mile End Road, side door. I do not haggle.