JJ's decision to reject the professional contract was a seismic event, a moment that sent shockwaves through our small and close-knit footballing world.

It was an act of loyalty so profound, so unexpected, and so deeply counter-cultural that it transformed the very fabric of our team.

The crisis, the slump, the infighting… it all just melted away, replaced by a new, and incredibly powerful, sense of collective purpose. We were no longer just a team fighting for promotion; we were a team fighting for a cause.

The final stretch of the season was a brutal and relentless war of attrition. We had six games left to play. Six games to go.

We were in second place, three points behind Salford City Amateurs, who had recovered from their derby defeat to us and had gone on another relentless winning run. There was only one promotion spot. The maths was simple. We had to win all our remaining games. And we had to hope that Salford would slip up.

I was living and breathing football, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Emma texted me asking if I was still alive. I responded with a tactical diagram. She sent back a gif of someone rolling their eyes. Fair.

The problem was, I still had to work. The club was not paying me a salary.

I got a small bonus when we won fifty quid here, a hundred there but it was not enough to live on.

So every night, after training, after matches, after spending hours analyzing opponents on the system and also browsing the internet, I would drag myself to the convenience store for the night shift.

Six hours of stocking shelves, serving drunk customers, and mopping floors. Then home for three hours of sleep before starting all over again, it was tiring but at least I got paid.

It was exhausting. It was unsustainable. But it was reality. I was a convenience store worker who happened to manage a football team, not the other way around. Not yet, anyway.

The first of those six games was on Saturday, February 20th, away to Ashton United, and the system's scouting report made for grim reading.

They were a mid-table team with nothing to play for, but they were physical, aggressive, and cynical. Their manager was an old-school disciplinarian who favoured a direct, long-ball style. The system flagged three of their players with high "Aggression" ratings and low "Discipline" scores. Translation: they were going to try to kick us off the park.

I called the team together the night before the match. "Tomorrow is going to be ugly," I said. "They're going to try to intimidate us. They're going to try to hurt us. They're going to try to make us lose our heads. We're not going to let them."

I made tactical adjustments, switching from our usual 4-3-3 to a more compact 4-4-1-1, with JJ playing just behind a lone striker. I instructed the midfield to sit deeper, to protect the defence, to avoid getting dragged into physical battles in dangerous areas.

I told Big Dave and our centre-backs to be aggressive at set pieces if they wanted a physical game, we would match them, but on our terms. "And when we get a corner," I said, "Big Dave, you're going to the near post. JJ, you're taking it short to Marcus, then getting into the box. We're going to work a routine."

The match was exactly as brutal as I had expected. Ashton's players were kicking anything that moved. The referee was weak, letting them get away with murder. By the thirtieth minute, three of our players were carrying knocks.

But we did not retaliate. We did not lose our discipline. We just kept playing, kept passing, kept waiting for our moment. It came in the sixty-eighth minute when we won a corner. JJ took it short to Marcus Chen, who was lurking at the edge of the box.

Marcus played it back to JJ, who had continued his run. JJ whipped in a low, driven cross to the near post. Big Dave attacked it like a man possessed, getting in front of his marker and flicking it goalward.

The ball deflected off a defender's shin and trickled over the line. 1-0. Ugly. Scrappy. Beautiful. We defended like our lives depended on it for the final twenty minutes. When the final whistle blew, I felt like I had aged ten years. But we had won. We had passed the first test.

That night, I worked the convenience store shift from eleven until five in the morning. A drunk man tried to pay for cigarettes with a button. A teenager asked if we sold "those things that make you fly."

I restocked the energy drinks while watching tactical videos on my phone, propped up against the Monster cans. At three in the morning, I used the system to scout our next opponents as I read Emma's articles on them, the holographic display hovering over the counter while I served a taxi driver buying coffee.

This was my life. This was the glamorous world of non-league management.

Three days later, on Tuesday, February 23rd, we were back at home to face Droylsden, a team fighting for their lives at the bottom of the table.

The system's analysis showed they were defensively solid but lacked creativity going forward. Their strategy in recent games had been simple: sit deep, frustrate the opposition, and hope for a set piece or a counter-attack.

I knew this would be a test of our patience. I set us up in our usual 4-3-3, but with instructions to be patient, to move the ball quickly, to stretch their defensive block.

I told JJ and our wingers to stay wide, to force their full-backs to make decisions, to create space in the channels. "They're going to sit deep and make it difficult," I told the team. "We're going to have seventy percent of the ball and it's going to feel like we're getting nowhere. Don't panic. Don't force it. The goal will come."

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