The betrayal of Mark Crossley was a body blow, a cynical and calculated act of sabotage that had left us reeling. We had lost our best defender, our leader, our rock. The hole in our team, and in our collective spirit, was immense.
All seemed lost. The dream, which had been so close, so tangible, so beautifully real, was now a distant and fading mirage. The bookmakers, the experts, the entire and deeply cynical world of lower-league football, had written us off. We were dead and buried.
I spent the next 24 hours in a state of deep and profound despair. I locked myself in my flat, I turned off my phone, and I descended into a dark and lonely spiral of self-pity and recrimination.
I had failed. I had let my players down. I had let my chairman down. I had let the entire and long-suffering community of Moss Side down. The weight of the world was on my shoulders, and it was crushing me.
