It is the 1985-6 football season. The Premiership is six years in the future. The Football League still consists of four divisions. And Bowland United are at the bottom of the Fourth. Once they were the best team in the country, with nine league championships and five FA Cups. In 1939 they were the first team to do the Cup and League double. Now they struggle for survival, facing re-election to the League, dogged by bad luck, tragic accidents - and the supernatural. A succession of promising young players are mysteriously badly injured on the pitch, and all report being fouled by a ghostly player who vanishes as strangely as he appeared. Something sinister has laid a curse on this club and a dreadful secret lies buried in the past.