Enjoying this newsletter? Forward it to a friend, or 10, and tell them to sign up at nytimes.com/rory.

Something I heard, a few months ago, has been on my mind this week. It was something that I think I knew, deep down, but had never quite put into words. It was not so much a new thought as a thought I had never quite had.

You will, I think, remember the story. Last summer, after more than a century of existence, Bury’s soccer team had to shutter its doors. It became, for a few days, something of a cause célèbre: proof of the inequity of soccer’s ecosystem; proof of the vulnerability of historic clubs to ill-intentioned owners; proof that something was wrong.

There was for a while something of a media circus outside Bury’s gates, but once the courts had ruled and the die had been cast, the journalists started to drift away. A few weeks later, a photograph emerged on social media. It was of Michael Curtis, the groundskeeper, proudly cutting the field at Gigg Lane, the team’s empty stadium, as he had done for decades.