I was in no way disappointed with Jay Rodriguez, who was admitting the ball had gone in off his hand

My local church was packed for Mass on Christmas morning. Who are these people who only turn up for the big days? I wouldn’t make much of a priest. I’d stand outside, glaring at any faces I didn’t recognise, making snide comments under my breath.

Anyway, I snuck in on the very back row. Just as well I wasn’t one of the ones left standing at the back. Things could have got very un-Christmassy indeed. I was squashed right up against a chap I’d not seen before.

“What brings you here?” he asked.

“Excuse me?”

Since it was Christmas I tried to look more puzzled than indignant.

Only two-and-a-half weeks earlier, on the sixth day of Advent, my team, West Brom, had played our local rivals, Aston Villa, on a tempestuous and decidedly ill-tempered Friday night match. Villa scored a fluky goal, we scored a good goal and then they scored a good goal. And that’s how it stayed until well into injury time.

The prospect of losing 2-1 at home to Aston Villa was too much to bear. The weekend stood in ruins. Christmas would have to be cancelled; 2018 was ending in calamity; 2019, surely another year of disappointment, was hoving miserably into view. Despair reigned supreme.