The Viking: he came, he stayed, he conquered ... David Rawson's Rotherham United fan column

The pitch seemed greener. The air was definitely milder. A change in the seasons. A hint of new life, fresh growth.

Everything slightly unreal, slightly fantastical. Not least the display. Players surging forwards, taking risks. Maybe circumstances didn’t allow that before, maybe instructions from head coaches made it forbidden. Not this time.

And it worked. A team that’s barely had five shots since Christmas scored five goals in a game. You could tell a story of how, if only we’d played like this all season, we’d have stayed up.

That would be a fairy tale.

The truth is we owe more than half of our points total to the brilliance of our keeper. And he’s off. Deservedly moving to bigger and better things.

Like everything else Viktor’s faced on the New York Stadium pitch, the post-match interview was handled perfectly.

“What a journey ... and it might not be the end,” he said. It almost certainly is, and every single one of us wants him to go on to the success he deserves.

Because Viktor is almost unique these days, in seeing us as a destination, not a signpost.

For most, we’re the club you join because there’s nothing better available anywhere else.

Even those who do well seem impatient to cash in on that success. No-one has a half-decent season and signs a contract extension with us.

Except Viktor. Who genuinely seemed to believe that playing regularly for us was something to be relished. Like any of us would, if only we had the ability.

Warne built a team that wanted to play for him. Taylor built a team of players for whom we were the least worst option, a last best chance to shift the momentum of their careers. Of Warne’s signings, only Viktor extended his stay. Of Taylor’s, few, if any, will get the opportunity to.

The summer will see incomings. There will be a lot of talk about how much it means to play for this club. Much of that talk will be hot air.

But it will do its job in building up the narrative. Creating a sense of story that might, if we’re lucky, compensate for all the things that the club lacks, on and off the field.

We need it. We need some kind of cheat mode to compete, given what we don’t have. A sense of story is as much as we have

For four years, Viktor’s been our cheat mode. A star on the pitch, a rallying point off it, one of our finest ever players.

He’ll be missed.