One more point: how Cambridge have toyed with my heart as promotion beckons

A few years ago, a team of scientists at the University of Oxford did a study into the effects on your heart of watching your football team. By testing saliva from Brazilian fans during their 7-1 defeat to Germany at the 2014 World Cup, they worked out that the most ardent supporters experience such intense levels of physical stress they could be putting themselves at risk of a heart attack. Levels of the hormone cortisol soared during the game – constricting blood vessels, raising blood pressure and even damaging already weakened hearts. Raised cortisol can also apparently give people a feeling of impending doom.

Impending doom – the default setting for any football fan whose side still has a chance of promotion or relegation this weekend. Agony. Stress. Hope. More agony. Game on iFollow on the laptop, thumb constantly refreshing live scores on your second screen – before flicking to the live table even though you know exactly what it’s going to look like.

Related: Homegrown hero and evergreen Hoolahan help Cambridge to the top | Ben Fisher

You’ve memorised Bolton’s, Morecambe’s, Cheltenham’s and Tranmere’s fixtures for the past month. You’ve been checking their opponents’ form. Every game in hand – whether for you or a rival – is automatically three points. Don’t even bother playing the games. Just update the tables.

You can’t wait another week. You check the table again – adding on hypothetical points from games where you conceded late on – ignoring your last-minute winners. It’s Tuesday afternoon. No games have been played in the last hour. You check the table again. You’re still not promoted.

Here are the facts. My beloved Cambridge United need a point for promotion. On Saturday we are home to Grimsby, bottom of the league and already relegated. If Bolton or Morecambe fail to win we are promoted, regardless. We could even win the title if we win and Cheltenham don’t. It’s customary to offer one’s right arm for such a position at the start of the season. But I’d rather be 11th and still have my right arm. In fact, 11th sounds like a far more relaxing place.

Our last point came on 20 April – it feels like a lifetime ago. A Tuesday night win at Orient.

I was there. A fan. In a stadium. Well, almost. A Northampton supporter called Nick emailed me a couple of weeks before with a “slightly odd offer”. “I’ve just recently moved into a flat in the corner of Orient’s ground and spotted that they have a home game against Cambridge coming up. Would you like to come? Our balcony is pretty big and allows for social distancing, so both me and my partner will happily keep out of the way. Anyway, just a thought.”

Gambling on Nick not being a psychopath, I brought along two of my oldest mates. And on the night the European Super League fell apart I was cheering my team, with my friends, towards promotion, thanks to the kindness of strangers. What’s the point of football? What’s the point of sport? This was. At least that was the misty-eyed conclusion I arrived at as I staggered home.

That night was our record away attendance of the season – as many as 12 (twelve) fans. Some others had booked an Airbnb in the opposite corner months before. The players celebrated the opener in front of them, and our second, third and fourth directly below us. As we walked out of the ground, the striker Paul Mullin was hopping on the team coach. “Just one more.”

Just one point needed from Stevenage, Harrogate and Grimsby. Cambridge United 0-1 Stevenage. We go again. Just one point needed from Harrogate and Grimsby.

For the 90 minutes of our 5-4 defeat to Harrogate I could feel my heart beating in my forehead. By full time my Roy Keane vein was pulsing visibly from my temple. It was Harrogate reserves – resting players for Monday’s delayed 2020 FA Trophy final.

Three-nil down after 20 minutes. Utter shellshock. 3-1. Hope. 3-2. Come on. 4-2. Fuck. 4-3. One more. Penalty! 4-4. Scenes – on my own in the living room. Fifteen minutes to hold it. 84th minute. Harrogate set piece. Away. AWAY. AWAYYYYYYY. 5-4. Full Time. Emptiness.

The following day, on a bench by the pitches of my amateur team in south-west London. A pulled groin and a 5-2 cup defeat. A can of Red Stripe, staring at my phone. Bolton, Cheltenham and Tranmere losing. Morecambe winning. Could have been worse. Next to me, our ageing striker John doing the same – a Sheffield Wednesday fan, feverishly refreshing Swansea v Derby. 0-1. Relegated. 1-1. Hope. 2-1. Still alive!

One more day. For Cambridge and Bolton and Morecambe fans – for Wednesday and Derby and Rotherham. For all those sides still trying to get in the play-offs. TVs and laptops up and down the country, across the world – streaming, staring, hoping, dreaming.

There are apparently 26 or 27 permutations for what will happen at the top of League Two. Only one of them has Cambridge failing to go up. It hurts to think about it. But I have so much pride in the team – I feel closer to the club than I have for years: a brilliant young manager in Mark Bonner, Wes Hoolahan being a genius, the Radio Cambridgeshire commentary team filling my lockdown with last-minute winners.

Perhaps the ESL was right all along. Stop promotion and relegation for ever. It will do our hearts the power of good. But while it remains, for my own cortisol levels, just one point. Please.