On the basis of my published novels, Dead Man Singing and Foul and Fair, it won’t surprise anyone to learn that music and football are two of my passions. Two of my favourite broadcasters, Colin Murray and Pat Nevin, combine these with a regular half-hour feature on the former’s Sunday morning 5Live radio show called the Great Football Songbook. The idea is that each week they take one football club and dig into the song most associated with it, the one that somewhere in the mists of history was adopted by fans and is now sung regularly on the terraces (back when we used to have terraces).

I’m not sure if my team, Fulham, has been featured yet, but here’s a story of a song that is unlikely to crop up, but which might have done in another universe. I’ve written before about one of the magical moments of music from the terraces at Fulham, but here’s the story of the anthem than never was.

It goes back to the 1993-94 season, when Fulham were struggling in the lower reaches of the third tier of English football. In March 1994 manager Don Mackay was sacked – at half time, apparently, in a game with Leyton Orient – with the club desperately fighting against relegation. At the time the board was also locked in a legal battle over our right to continue playing at our beloved Craven Cottage ground and there was a real sense among the fans that the entire existence of the club was on the line.

Earlier that year Mariah Carey had enjoyed a hit single with a cover of the song Without You, originally by Badfinger but most associated (by me anyway) with Harry Nilsson. In the dark, fearful days of our existential struggle, one lone fan started singing it on the Hammersmith End, and his voice was soon joined by others. The bittersweet tone to the lyrics struck a chord with our existential dread, and the anthemic chorus somehow summed up the lot of a football fan in such times. For most of us, it truly felt like we couldn’t live if living was without our team.

For the rest of the season, the song was given regular airings by the fans, becoming more and more a crowd favourite and creating an emotional, stirring backdrop to the team’s continued efforts to avoid the drop. It was a spine-tingling experience, standing shoulder to shoulder with other fans and belting out the words. It felt like a declaration of our alleigence to so much more than eleven men in nylon sportswear, to an institution, to something woven into the very fabric of our lives. It felt like our part in the grim battle that was being played out in front of us week by week. Centre forward Sean Farrell and tricky winger Julian Hails both returned from injury in time to help deliver a win in the last home game of the season to move us out of the relegation zone with one game to go. We were nearly there.

Alas, it wasn’t to be. If Farrell and Hails had stayed fit, if they had been available for more games, perhaps things would have been different (although every relegated team has their own version of that particular refrain), but despite the hope of the last home game, the following weekend saw an abject performance in an away defeat and the inevitable drop into the fourth tier.

The following season, we all regrouped for the first home match, and early in the game someone attempted to carry on where we had left off. ‘Oh, I can’t forget this evening…’ A few voices joined the chorus, but before  a critical mass could be reached another fan, an older (and, dare I say it, more curmudgeonly) one snapped back with a vehement ‘Shut up!’ Reader, the spell was broken, the magic was gone and I never heard the song sung at Fulham again. Some people will cling to Ms Carey’s as the definitive version, others to Harry Nilsson’s, but for me the song has never sounded better than when belted out by hundreds of tone-deaf blokes with more enthusiasm than tunefulness. Maybe you had to be there.