Matt Maher: Stunning Walsall collapse sets up the chance for remarkable comeback

That will surely be the message head coach Mat Sadler will want to get across to his players as they head into Sunday’s League Two play-off first leg at Chesterfield, eight days on from missing out on automatic promotion in the most agonising fashion.

You’ve no doubt seen the footage. Bradford City’s Antoni Sarcevic scoring the jammiest, most unintentional yet most precious last-minute winner you will ever find. Cut to Gresty Road, where scenes of celebration turned to confusion and despair. 

This was sport at its most cruel but then it was always the risk once the Saddlers had allowed destiny to slip from their own grasp. 

For so much of the past nine months, they held it firmly. Theirs just might be the biggest implosion in the history of football. From 15 points clear in January, to missing out. From being on course for a record points haul, to switching to relegation form in what felt like the blink of an eye.

No other team, since the formation of the Football League in 1888, has won nine consecutive matches and also gone 13 without a win in the same season. The past few months have been the ultimate slow motion car crash, best watched through your fingers, if you could stomach it.

And still, nothing has been lost yet. The play-offs offer a second chance. Destiny is back in Walsall’s hands. Few will give them much hope but then again, this has been the strangest of seasons.

For Sadler, these past few months have been bruising. Yet sport is a curious business. Had Sarcevic’s deflection gone wide of the post and the Saddlers won promotion last weekend a large chunk of the narrative would have focused on their head coach effectively getting out of jail.

You will find it much harder to say that, should he now rally them to victory in the play-offs.

Easy? Far from it. But in the context of this crazy season, Walsall winning the play-offs is arguably more probable than much of what we have already seen.