Didn’t the world seem a brighter, happier, sunnier place this morning? Didn’t the piercing shriek of the alarm clock sound just that little better than usual? Didn’t the first cuppa of the day smell particularly inviting? Wasn’t the dawn birdsong even sweeter than normal? Did you walk to work with a faintly idiotic smile on your face and a slightly jauntier gait than yesterday? This obliging correspondent did. Here’s why:

With night fully fallen and time passing with a maddening lack of haste, the fourth official’s electronic board indicates that four minutes remain and a groan punctures the incessant volley of sound from the Tiger Nation, huddled together in a corner of the Walkers Stadium.

Leicester are frantic now; the ball is pinged into our area without respite - time and again it is diverted from danger. Short passes, long balls, crosses, aimless swipes towards goal, all are manfully repelled by a City side that had quite simply had determined that the victory would be theirs. And five agonising minutes after the four minutes were announced, referee Mike Jones signalled the end of the match and three points for the Tigers.

On a warm late-summer evening in Leicestershire, Phil Parkinson had made the widely anticipated decision to remove Dean Marney from the side, Ryan France taking his place. That aside, it was the same XI that lost to Birmingham on Saturday, as the Tigers carded: Myhill; Ricketts, Turner, Collins, Dawson; France, Ashbee (c), Livermore, Fagan; Bridges, Forster.

The match started quietly. Eerily quietly, with both sides unprepared to do anything other than shadow box. The ball spent more time in City’s half, with our hosts pleased to have it but palpably unable to use it. This was in no small part due to Sam Collins, who inserted several steely challenges and marshalled the Tigers’ defence with considerable aplomb throughout.

Levi Porter had the best chance of first half after quarter of an hour, hastily stabbing at a chance from close range and forcing the ball wide. Gradually, the home side’s resolve slipped and the game slid into a pattern of untidiness. However, the chances that did come were all for Leicester, with Myhill smartly stepping off his line to thwart Hughes after good work by Fryatt.

The game lumbered on. The Leicester fans’ sponsored silence last season had proven so successful that they had continued it into this season – one assumes that many starving African orphans are benefiting from this selfless act and we must salute their collective will. City had their first chance with about ten minutes of the half remaining, when home keeper Henderson parried a Bridges effort.

And that was about it. 0-0 at the break, and an accurate reflection of a mediocre half. Yet, something rather impressive had occurred. Five minutes before the teams trudged, the Tiger Nation found its voice, and maintained it throughout the whole interval and the entire second half. We were low on numbers – under a thousand had made the short trip, although many missed much of the first half through a combination of M1 traffic and Leicester’s unsurprisingly customer-unfriendly decision not to delay the match. However, those who had travelled south atoned for small numbers with great vigour.

Back to Leicester’s manifest hostility to visiting supporters. Last season had witnessed one of the most shambolic turnstile operations in years, for which only the most begrudging of apologies was offered. They have not learned the lessons. Your humble scribe was fortunate enough to spend only twenty minutes held up on the motorway and made kick-off on time. Many were not so lucky. One doubts that the idea of delaying the match even occurred to this wretched football club – it had not done so last season when hundreds of people were marooned outside its very walls, so people on a distant highway certainly will have been of no consequence. However, their stewards, a blank-faced collection of joyless automatons, found the time to remove City fans from the back row because – horror of horrors – they were banging on the satisfyingly acoustic rear wall. One marvels at their sense of priorities.

On with the football, because, gentle reader, it is soon to be this reporter’s privilege to relate a goal of wondrous beauty. First to the perfunctory details though – Marney replaced the presumably-injured Forster, while Leicester swapped Kenton for Stearman. Fagan moved up front to partner Bridges, while Marney played on the right.

Leicester again opened the brighter, a handful of corners eventually prompting Myhill into acrobatic action to deny McCarthy. Hume was the next to do battle with our gloveman, and also found himself bested. But enough of that – on with the bit that’ll live long in the memory.

Michael Bridges won an aerial dual and collected the ball himself, forty yards from goal. As three team-mates hared forward to distract the Leicester defence, our new hero advanced goalwards. And shot. And scored.

One wonders quite how he persuaded the ball to fly in such a dreamy arc from his boot to the top corner. Upon addressing the sphere, until then so shabbily treated, had he pledged to love and honour it forever, protect it from harm, achieve greatness together, and maybe buy it a castle or a tropical island and produce in tandem swarms of shiny, lean, white-toothed children of a cereal-advert vintage?

Or maybe he just kicked it really well. Either way, as the ball softly placed itself in the top corner, the Tiger Nation unleashed a guttural bellow of triumph and capered with mildly unhinged glee. Bridges ran over to the touchline his delighted manager was patrolling and was swamped by jubilant colleagues.

The effect upon the side was electrifying, and visibly toughened our approach. There was not a hint of slack play from a single player – the first time this season we have truly looked a team. Leicester, on the other hand, were flattened. Sure, they went through the motions of rescuing the game, but their lacked the guile and wit to penetrate.

The manager was clearly impressed, electing to make no further substitutes even has his players tired slightly. The game sailed merrily on, the Tiger Nation’s support was a joy to behold, the defence remained impervious to the half-hearted assaults on it. Fryatt wasted a couple of chances, spooning one shot wide and forcing a close-range save from Myhill, but the game was slipping away from the home side.

The referee concocts four minutes of injury time, plays more anyway, but the game is already up, and both sides know it. Fagan should have doubled the winning margin when Bridges scoops up possession from a slothful adversary and releases him with nary a defender in sight, but he ill-advisedly opts to control the ball with his shin and it squirts fifteen yards from him into Henderson’s grasp. A long punt, another stoutly cleared free-kick, and we win.

The full-time whistle is greeted by further pandemonium and the players gleefully trot over to clap, clench fists and grin as we observed the customary rituals of mutual adoration, relief writ large over the manager’s face.

This was, if we briefly suspend the hyperbole, a poor match. One that had a glittering, memorable moment in it, but this was not a good game of football. The goal aside, City created little. However, crucially, there was a sense of purpose and togetherness to much of our play. The defence was tight and made things difficult for Leicester. The midfield, defensive in make-up and mindset, was occasionally guilty of dropping a little too deep for comfort, yet the pairing of Ashbee and Livermore rarely wasted possession and did the running of three men.

And there was Michael Bridges. Ah, yes. A man you would pay to watch. He is clever, calm and inventive. His goal capped off an outstanding individual display. One hesitates to herald a man with just two games to his name as a new hero, yet I am already looking forward to watching him play next week.

And as for our manager, one can imagine that he too felt a particularly lightness of mood this morning. No-one is relegated in September, yet he must have experienced a degree of anxiety as the losses column expanded by the week even as the supporters continued to sing his name. Last night, you felt that our faith in one another may indeed be justified. (AD)