The pitch was waterlogged. Great puddles lay across it, shimmering beneath the floodlights. The rain kept on falling, remorseless as if Hemingway himself had written it. Twenty-one footballers struggled to stay upright. The other one was Adam Boyd. He not only kept his footing, he waltzed across the sodden surface. He struck a hat-trick, each goal better than the last. For the third, Boyd collected a pass on the edge of the Owls’ penalty area, drifted to the right, stopped dead to send the pursuing Wednesday full-back splashing. He faked to shoot and watched another opponent slide past engulfed in spray. He looked up then, and seeing David Lucas marginally off his line,
toe-ended a chip so delicate it ran down the back netting of the goal soundlessly, soft as a playboy’s fingers along a showgirl’s spine.