What separates us from the animals? I imagine the answer to that question in the away end at Bramall Lane earlier this season was probably ‘very little’.

But one of the things that separates us is surely that we tell stories. We have been telling stories, daubed on cave walls and etched into stone tablets and projected in darkened cinemas, for thousands of years.

When you’re in a promotion chase, scrapping on the floor for every point and obsessed by the cold hard maths of the league table, it can be easy to forget that football is about stories. About telling the story of a place and its people, and the stories of those individuals tasked with representing them.

Ao Tanaka, collapsing in tears on the pitch, explained to Daniel Farke in the dressing room why he was crying. A vessel for the dreams of thousands, he had given it all. “I’m so empty and tired.” A story in five words. Eat shit, Hemingway.

But another man’s story earned another chapter, perhaps even its ending, on Tuesday night. Patrick Bamford at Leeds.

It’s a story, appropriately, with some ups and downs. This is a man who has won one league, finished 9th in another, and pulled on an England shirt along with his United one during his time at Elland Road. He has also been forced to endure death threats against him and his family from “fans” of his own team. Of course, I don’t really know Patrick Bamford, and I’m assuming that also applies to almost everyone reading this. I can’t know how difficult those tough times have been for him and his family. But I can see the rough outline of the story, and I desperately want it to end happily for him at Leeds.

Unfortunately some people aren’t very good at telling stories. Anyone who has propped up the bar in a village pub for longer than a couple of hours will know this. Despite thousands of years of collective memory and practise, they just don’t get how to do it. Enter lino Darren Williams. Just give the goal and the happy ending mate, come on.

Instead, Bamford was denied his goal and the perfect redemption arc; a goal against his former team whose fans gave him a Middlesbrough serenade on to the pitch. A goal to settle nerves in one game and put an entire season firmly back on track. That’s just good writing.

In many ways though, for a player who has always had to fight for his place in the team and in the hearts of the fanbase, a goal might not have been the perfect ending.

Instead, Bamford did it in his own inimitable style. If we have all become rats scrabbling on the floor for points, then in the dying embers of Tuesday’s game Bamford became a swan fighting to protect his young. He covered every inch of the Riverside turf and used all of his not inconsiderate frame to hassle, harry, win and keep the ball. When he has retired, we will all look back on the Villa hat-trick or that Peterborough goal as probably his greatest moments, but we will remember him as someone who always gave everything for the shirt.

So maybe Darren Williams and the EFL were on to something after all. Bamford didn’t score, but through sheer force of will he made damn sure Boro didn’t either. A redemption arc perfectly befitting his character. Fuck it, give Williams all our games until the end of the season and let’s see what happens. Maybe he could write in the mag, clearly this guy has something.

I hope this isn’t the end of Bamford’s story at Leeds, and I could certainly write a better one – Darren Williams awards a clearly offside Bamford his overhead kick winner against Plymouth, for example – but if that was his last significant contribution in a white shirt, it was pretty fucking good.