To a degree, the framing device of this one – a group of football referees – could easily have been another sport, or something else entirely. This episode was about the obsession, the single-mindedness, and the megalomania that strong passions inspire – these are weighty and dramatic themes. In that sense this could have been a rugby pitch, because it wasn’t about the sport – it was about the human emotion behind it. But there is something unique about football – its place in the national consciousness, its singular importance to its fans. And so the division inspired in this episode is natural, with the generic descriptors of City, United, and Rovers serving to drive home the futility of it all. It’s notable too that this was an all-male episode. Football – sport, more generally – is stereotypically masculine, testosterone-driven, and that final image of a shirtless man, tattooed intimidatingly, flexing and stretching his body in passion, sums it all up.

There are varying degrees of masculinity in this episode. We have Brendan, softly-spoken and rules-obsessed – and, as a fourth referee, a nobody, forgotten. Phil is mocked for his more metrosexual tendencies, his grooming and his application of eyeliner. Martin and Oggy are more men’s men, and clearly more passionate about the game. But this is complicated by Martin’s quiet affair with Calvin. It was raised by the writers in the Inside Inside No. 9 Podcast that there have been no openly gay footballers; any who have been gay have come out after they’ve retired from the game. So swirling amongst this toxic masculinity is forbidden and hidden love, a love that if revealed would lead inevitably to abuse.

This is all, of course, a misdirect. Martin’s plan to balance the teams’ scores comes across as insane and obsessive, a rules-obsessed referee grappling with his retirement and his reputation and, the audience knows, his love. This is a dramatic concoction. But it transpires that it’s all a ruse, and that Martin had orchestrated it all from the start. His obsession with the rules becomes a hidden obsession with his team, and he’s willing to put his reputation and his pension on the line for it. While this does turn the episode on its head in a classic Inside No. 9 fashion, it sadly serves to pull against the dramatic heft of the episode. Martin’s rules-based megalomania is an affectation, for this episode at least, and so the bulk of the drama of the episode is overwritten by a twist reveal. It doesn’t make the episode bad, by any means, but it’s something of a shame nonetheless.