We warm up in a separate area of the athletic complex designated for our team, spending the morning in rich silence, until it’s time for us to make our way to the lockers. The away locker room is set up for us in a nicer way than any of us have ever seen anywhere. Every locker is labelled with a name and number for the day, the corresponding uniform ironed and hung up inside, along with our national logo-embroidered duffel bags, which, depending on the outcome of this game, could become either a happy souvenir or buckshot to the chest.

We listen to Maddie do her pre-game affirmations, the same ones she does before every match, as we get into our kilts and jerseys. They’re brand-new, with the same logo on the left shoulder. WCL Championship 2025. The material is white, with printed orange letters and numbers crisper than our own university-made uniforms.

‘I am resilient. I am strong. I am passionate,’ chants Maddie, like she’s trying to summon the ghost of self-esteem. At the other end of the locker room, Brianna is lining the girls up so she can get going on hair. I pull my kinesiology tape from my bag and start taping up my shins, then switch to medical tape for my bad wrist.

As I press the pink tape to my skin to make sure it sticks, Colt’s voice whispers in my ear.

That good?

Sure, I reply.

Get out there. Get a red card or two, while you’re at it.

‘Not today,’ I mouth with a little laugh. As much as both of us know the rules of the sport well, that idiot always wants me to get a penalty. Some guys like getting heartfelt handwritten cards from their girlfriends. My dumb fake boyfriend would probably ask for a red card.

You look awfully pretty when you get pissed. Even prettier when you start to blow your top when the ref goes for the card.

I tear the tape with my mouth and toss the roll back into my bag. With a sigh, I look up at the ceiling, decorated with the dramatically lit outline of the New England Bobcat itself.

Colton James Bradley, where are you when I need you most?

We don’t need to enter the field properly to hear how amped up the crowd is – and how many of them are out there. The roaring is almost quadruple what we heard back in DC. You can barely hear the throb of the music when the Clippers rush out of the tunnel, pumping the crowd up so they move from ridiculously loud to borderline deafening. It’s not really that many people in the grand scheme of things: professional football matches fill the entire place up, and this is maybe a small fraction of capacity. But for us, in a sport that’s been in the back corner our whole lives, this is everything.