Deano gave me a roll of white tape at seven o'clock on Monday morning and didn't ask what it was for until I had used all of it.
"Is that a box?"
"It's a technical area."
He came out of the kit room door with his tea, stood on the edge of Pitch 2, and looked at it. Four strips of tape on wet grass, pegged at the corners with tent pegs out of his own garage, one metre off the touchline and twelve yards long. I had measured it off the Wembley one and got Bray to hold the other end of the tape measure in the dark.
"Who's it for?"
"Me."
Deano drank his tea. He looked at me over the rim of the mug, then at the tape, and then back at me.
"You're going to stand in that," he said.
"All week."
"In training."
"In training."
"Right," Deano said. He went back inside, and five minutes later he came out again with four more pegs because one of the corners had already come up.
