Stepney FC 1–0 Marlborough United: the distance closes

The only goal arrived after exactly half an hour. Jeremiah Aldridge had spent the opening exchanges planting crosses that came to nothing; at 30 minutes he planted the one that mattered, and Damien Compère-Morel met it with a header that makes you wonder why the man bothers with his feet at all. Issue three hundred and twelve: this is his fourth consecutive matchday with a goal, the previous instalments arriving in the 84th minute at Acton, the 90th at Mancunia and the 56th at Llandaff as recently as Wednesday. Anyway. He is now scoring in every time slot the fixture list offers, and Thursday evidently suits him best.

The goal changed the mood of the contest before it changed the result. Marlborough United, so accustomed to having their own way against this opposition, their earlier meeting having finished 3-1 with a smugness that lingers, suddenly found themselves chasing a game Stepney had no intention of releasing. With no sending off to add theatre, the second half settled into a familiar, well-mannered siege: Marlborough kept the ball, Stepney kept the shape, and nobody kept very much else. The header mattered because it was the one moment of genuine quality on an afternoon that barely deserved one.

That will not bother Stepney. The league table, read before kick-off, said 62 to 58; read at full-time it says 62 to 61, a texture that turns a win into an undercurrent. Compère-Morel has given his team something their rivals cannot match: a striker who scores on every matchday regardless of the calendar, the weather, or the shape of the opposition.

Tomorrow brings Matchday 34, and the gap is one point. That is not yet a title race. It is, however, no longer anyone else's.