Nobody quite knew how to prepare for this one, which suited both sides fine, since neither of them prepared for anything in the conventional sense.
Atlantis arrived unhurried, ancient, moving with the settled patience of a civilisation that had, after all, already come back from 2-0 down once this tournament and saw no reason to rush the warm-up. Dougal arrived complaining about the state of the grass before she’d even reached the centre circle. Brian arrived at her own pace, which was to say barely arrived at all before kickoff. Ermintrude took up a position on the wing and stayed there, majestically, regardless of where play actually was. Zebedee didn’t walk out so much as spring into existence somewhere near the touchline, already bouncing.
Minute 6: Atlantis strolled it about, patient, probing, sideways and back, sideways and back, the exact rhythm that had worn down the Flowerpot Men two rounds earlier.
Minute 14: Dougal, still complaining, mistimed a challenge so badly she ended up facing her own goal, and somehow turned the resulting confusion into a genuinely useful interception, purely by accident, which she complained about too.
Minute 22: GOAL, Atlantis. The one-touch move, unhurried and inevitable, split the Magic Roundabout wide open exactly the way it had against the Flowerpot Men. 1-0. The Atlantean captain didn’t celebrate. She simply glanced at the crowd the way something ancient looks at weather.
Minute 35: Zebedee, for no reason anyone could identify, boinged directly over an Atlantis defender mid-tackle, landed with the ball still at her feet, and squared it to Brian, who had, by pure chance, wandered into exactly the right spot. 1-1. Brian looked as surprised as anyone.
Minute 48: Ermintrude, still on the wing, still majestic, finally received the ball for the first time all match and delivered a cross of such devastating accuracy that nobody, least of all Ermintrude, seemed to expect it. Dougal met it with her head, still complaining mid-jump, and buried it. 2-1, Magic Roundabout.
Minute 60: Atlantis, patient as ever, worked their way back through their long, unhurried sequences — and equalised through the same one-touch inevitability, 2-2, the Atlantean captain allowing herself, this time, the ghost of a smile.
Minute 71: Zebedee, given space, boinged three times in quick succession across the edge of the box, wrong-footing two defenders who had never seen anything move quite like that, and slotted home from an angle that shouldn’t have worked. 3-2, Magic Roundabout. Dougal complained that the goal “should have been hers,” while celebrating it enthusiastically regardless.
Minute 84: Atlantis pressed for a third equaliser, patient sequence after patient sequence, and finally broke through with a header that beat the keeper all ends up — only for Brian, standing on the line for reasons nobody had assigned her, to head it clear at the very last possible moment, purely by being in the way.
90+3: Dougal, complaining that extra time would be “an insult to everyone’s evening,” won the ball in midfield, drove forward alone, and scored a fourth simply to end the conversation. 4-2, Magic Roundabout.
Atlantis took the defeat with the same ancient composure they took everything, shaking every paw individually, unhurried even in departure. Dougal complained about the pitch one final time on the way off, which everyone now understood to be her version of a victory speech.
Greta’s line appeared under the glass before the floodlights dimmed:
Atlantis — out, eventually, again. The Magic Roundabout — through, chaotically, as ever. Some empires wake up too late.
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