"He's one of our own! He's one of our own! Danny Walsh! He's one of our own!"
And that, of everything, was the one that did me. That daft old song from home.
Because fourteen months back I'd walked into a Crystal Palace side sat five points off the drop with five games to go, into a dressing room that had stopped believing and a ground that had turned on the last fella. Those same people. That same song, only nobody was singing it then.
Five games. We won all five. Eighth, and into Europe, and half the country calling it a fluke.
Then a season that had no business happening. The Carabao Cup. The FA Cup. The Europa League, us, Crystal Palace, champions of Europe. Second in the land behind a City side that cost ten of us, on a budget that never touched seventy million, with twelve men shipped out of that building to make room.
I'd won the lot that year. Lifted things I'd only ever watched other men lift. And none of it, not one night of it, had felt like this.
