The long drive to a road game, and why nobody minds it

Two hours out, two hours back, and a bus full of people who have run out of things to say to each other. It remains the best part of the season for most of them.

Road trips are the part of a season that never makes the write-up. There is no result attached to them, nothing to put in a record book, and yet ask anyone who has played a full schedule what they remember and the bus comes up before the games do.

The routine is fixed enough to be a ritual. The same seats, claimed on the first trip and defended for the rest of the year. The same argument about what gets played through the speakers, settled the same way every time. A stop on the way home that everyone pretends to be indifferent about.

Coaches tend to leave it alone. Whatever it is that turns a roster into a team happens somewhere in those four hours, and it does not happen faster because someone organised it.

The games get harder from here and the drives get longer. Nobody has complained yet, which by this point in the season counts as a good sign.