The best bit is often the pint afterwards, or the discussion of ‘what if’ on the journey home. These are the moments when football is at its best – when it has stopped.

Then the dissection of the 90 minutes can begin and it doesn’t matter if that is done clutching a pint of Noel’s Chemical Effluent, soberly with statistics, or in a gr8ingly incomprehensible text to the local radio station.

Except Monday night’s match refused to be put under the microscope. There couldn’t be any discussion after that, just the puffing of cheeks, the rolling of eyes and the quiet mutterings of expletives.

It wasn’t a game to be analysed, it sort of happened. Like a volcano or Mrs Brown’s Boys, it couldn’t be stopped. Everyone seemed powerless, including the players and managers.

It was closer to watching a game of FIFA, played by toddlers, albeit horribly drunk ones. There was a lot of autopilot attacking and automatic passing but no one could take control.

Even the goals - moments which define games - became almost irrelevant. Each time one went in, its importance was stolen by whatever happened next: Ben Gladwin’s supreme volley should have been a match-winner, but wasn’t.

Michael Smith predatory hammer should have settled matters, but didn’t. The same goes for both Smith’s emotionless penalty and Jonathan Obika’s delicious dance and flick.

They all deserve to be replayed almost endlessly. Instead they are just parts of a game which will be remembered as an enormous claggy whole.

Watching the game again on television, even the ‘experts’ were reduced to mouthing platitudes.

They clung to the score like life-jackets, awkwardly talking as if someone was forcing apart their lips with lolly sticks when really the game demanded, and deserved, an awestruck silence.

All we needed was the score in the corner of the screen. Just like I needed the scoreboard on the back of the Stratton Bank to work.

That was until I got to the pub and we could all try to pick the bones out of the game, and that pint of Noel’s Chemical Effluent.