Northampton Town played Swansea City in the annual festival of melodramatic injustice called the play-offs. This was the play-off for a place in the Nationwide League second division. Northampton ludicrously, beautifully won 1-0.
No more for them the heart-wearying trudge to Hartlepool United, Torquay United and Barnet. No, they take their deserved place a division higher, among the glamour boys Plymouth Argyle, Preston North End, Wycombe Wanderers. What more could any heart desire?
Northampton, who, like most other clubs at such a level, have flirted with extinction, came to Wembley for the first time in their history with thousands upon thousands of supporters: loyal supporters for at least a day, supporters they never knew they had. They outnumbered and outyelled the Swansea followers, but their team was outplayed for most of the match. Jan Molby was the key to that. Molby, the Swansea player-manager, never svelte even in his palmiest days with Liverpool, is now a colossus of the third division.
Everything about the man is clumsy save his feet, everything about him slow save his footballing brain. It really should have been his day. Wembley, a place of agoraphobic spaces for most third division players, is made for passers like Molby. As, indeed, are third division opponents.
"You can dominate games too much," Molby mourned afterwards. Which is nonsense: the trouble is that dominating games without actually scoring is destructive of self-belief.
There is normally a certain zing about the play-offs. As a rule, the higher stakes for which a game is played, the more dire the spectacle look at World Cup finals but this rule does not operate for play-offs. Having missed promotion by the usual means of solid, consistent effort, teams are given a second bite, culminating in a winner-takes-all occasion. There tends to be a joyous embracing of the sacred second chance.
This game, though, was not a bit like that. It was rather like a bad third division match. No doubt both managers told their players not to be overawed by the big occasion "Just go out and play your normal game." Alas, they all did.
By the time that 90 minutes had been played, every neutral in the stadium fortunately, there were not many felt with anguish the dreadful inevitability of extra time. How much more of this ghastliness could be tolerated? Which made the conclusion that much more beautiful, that much more ludicrous.
Into stoppage time, there was a free kick on the edge of the Swansea box. It was taken by a baldish chap called Frain. It cannoned into the wall, as you knew it would, a perfectly rotten free kick, in keeping with a perfectly rotten match, but Terry Heilbron, the referee, decided that there had been encroachment; well, there always is. Whimsically, Heilbron decided that, for once, the law would be enforced. He booked Coates, the encroacher, and Frain had another go.
It was like finding a fragment of a noble poem in the middle of a report of the allotments sub-committee meeting of Merton Borough Council (documents of this sort were once my daily reading matter). The sheer unexpectedness added to the beauty, the ludicrousness, the perfection of the moment.
There is not a player in the FA Carling Premiership who would not have been delighted with the kick: Juninho, Zola, Beckham, name who you like. It had power and dip and late swerve . . . and accuracy. There is not a goalkeeper in the land who would have been ashamed of being beaten by it. Even Schmeichel would have found it hard to find someone to blame.
Who is he, then, this fiendish Frain, this dead-ball magician? A young and rare and rising talent, to be plucked from the bowels of obscurity to a stage more suited to his extravagant gifts? Remember the name: you will probably never hear it again.
John Frain, aged 28. Came to Northampton on loan from Birmingham City. Signed for them full-time late this season. He was more than ten years with Birmingham and made more than 300 appearances for them. He has, in short, already reached his peak and is declining therefrom.
Yet he has kept the faith, you see, that is the point. You wonder why, since the difference between have and have-not is so uncrossably wide these days, with Premiership football and Premiership television and pouting Premiership girls threatening to remove their Premiership replica shirts on posters selling Premiership lager. Just why does a journeyman footballer keep on journeying?
The answer comes in Steve Claridge's excellent Tales From the Boot Camps. Claridge, who scored a memorable goal in the play-off final against Crystal Palace to secure Leicester City's place in the Premiership last season, tells of the ridiculous and impecunious life that he had lead with lowly clubs.
"At that level, you are not in it for the money," Claridge writes. "Most of us were in love with the idea of being a professional footballer. You live for your shot at glory, that one Cup result that lifts your name out of the small print." Frain has waited ten years and more for exactly that. Let us wish him joy of it.
NORTHAMPTON TOWN (3-4-1-2): A Woodman R Warburton, D Rennie (sub: D Peer, 40min), I Sampson I Clarkson, S Parrish, R Hunter, J Frain C Lee J Gayle (sub: J White, 76), N Grayson.
SWANSEA CITY (3-1-3-3): R Freestone J Moreira, K Walker, C Edwards J Molby D Penney, K Ampadu, J Coates S Torpey, C Heggs, D Thomas (sub: L Brown, 83).
Referee: T Heilbron.