It's a cold January night in south Wales.
Swansea City, bottom of the Premier League table, are entertaining Liverpool in desperate need of three points.
In the Reds' line-up, a certain Virgil van Dijk is preparing to make a highly-anticipated debut, in a side that smashed the Swans 5-0 only 27 days before at Anfield.
The Dutchman will of course go on to burn brightly as one of English football's most incandescent beacons of brilliance over the coming years. But here, under the lights of the Liberty Stadium, his talent is eclipsed.
The £75million signing rises to try to clear an out-swinging Swansea corner, but his header is straight to Federico Fernandez inside the penalty area, whose mere presence is enough to cushion the ball down and tee it up for Alfie Mawson to rifle home.
Bedlam breaks out in the stands, but once calm is restored, Liverpool commence an onslaught. Roberto Firmino hits the post. Mohamed Salah seems to create about 20 chances.
But, somehow, they just can't find a breakthrough.
Mawson is a big part of the reason why, his fighting spirit on the night embodied by his heroic block to deny Adam Lallana in stoppage time.
It's a performance that leaves pundits purring. "He was outstanding," Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher raves at the time. "He won the game at both ends."
It feels like a turning point for Carlos Carvalhal side's survival bid. Meanwhile, the Jack Army make their way home having seen one of their star players seemingly take a significant step towards the stratosphere of Premier League stardom.
Unfortunately, both assessments later prove wide of the mark. Swansea are relegated, and Mawson's career is brought to an end a mere five years later.
The 29-year-old's decision to announce his retirement from professional football last month came as a shock to many, and immediately sparked into life the narrative of a player whose potential should have delivered so much more.
But, having had time to look back on a career that took him from Welling United to the Premier League in just over two years, the centre-back prefers to dwell on the positives.
"I'm a glass-half-full guy," he says. "I enjoyed all of it. I've met some fantastic people and I've travelled all over. I'm grateful for that.
"There are way worse things going on in the world than me having to stop playing football because of my knee."
Mawson is set to be honoured by two of his former clubs on Saturday, as Wycombe Wanderers, his most recent employers and the side where he first made his name, take on Barnsley at Adams Park.
He admits he's a little embarrassed by the attention, but it's obvious he's hugely appreciative of the gesture, particularly given the harrowing nature of the knee injury that has ultimately forced him to hang up his boots.
"It's a ongoing issue with my lateral meniscus," he explains. "I've had it repaired five times and then I had it taken out on the sixth operation.
"It's essentially deterioration. Your meniscus acts like a doorstop between the bones and it stops cartilage fraying.
"My quad bone at the top of shin, I've something called a grade four chondral defect, where there's nothing but cartilage left, so that meant I had to finish early unfortunately."
Mawson's time on the treatment table has been well documented, and has clearly been a huge factor behind his tally of just 30 appearances over the last three years.
Many have tried to pinpoint the source of the issue. Former boss Claudio Ranieri even suggested he'd injured himself while putting on his boot before a game with Fulham - a claim Mawson flat-out denies.
"There wasn't one incident with it," he insists. "That was the strange thing. You can normally isolate it to this one thing. It was just day in, day out, repetitive strain on the area and I can't do anything about that, unfortunately.
"I think in the summer I was closer to retiring. Purely because of where I was. I just wasn't enjoying the game as much as I used to.
"Coming back here to Wycombe, I knew realistically I'd be finishing here, which would have been perfect as it meant I'd come full circle.
"Had I hoped it would be a few years later? Yeah. But it was in the back of my mind."
Barnsley, too, hold a special place in his heart. Mawson played nearly 60 games for the Reds, helping them to promotion to the Championship in 2016.
"I loved it there," he said. "It was a part of the world I'd generally never been to. I moved up to Sheffield and when you're from London everything's really foreign to you, so you don't really know what to expect. You don't know what you're going to be turned up and greeted with."
The move to south Wales in 2016 was clearly a culture shock too, mind.
"Originally, I thought it was a lot closer to home," he says with a smirk.
"Sheffield back to Reading was about three and a half to four hours. So I thought it was much closer and I'd be able to see family.
"But my geography's horrific. I had no idea where Swansea was. I assumed it was right next to Cardiff. They're rivals, so surely it would be right next to each other?
"So we're on the M4 driving past Cardiff and the sat-nav says there's another hour and 20 [to go] and I'm like 'what? No chance' and carried on driving. It was so much further than I thought.
"I was driving then and look to my left and I'm like 'is that the sea?!' I had no idea. I was baffled.
"But we ended up living in Langland. It was lovely. Really great. Great, great people. The only thing that took a bit of adapting to was that the training ground was at the Gower. Some mornings you'd be close to being late because of sheep and cows and that being in front of the car. A few of them nearly got me fined.
"But the people were great. The accents took a bit of getting used to as well. But we loved our time there. Loved it."
Mawson could have hardly had enjoyed a more eventful first season.
After signing for Francesco Guidolin, Bob Bradley arrived in October, before then making way for Paul Clement in the January.
Clement ultimately masterminded a sensational survival bid, but even he couldn't escape the sack the following season after overseeing a poor start to the new campaign.
"It was hard to go through so many managers," he remembers. "I'd never really had that before.
"But we had players there like Angel Rangel, Jack Cork, Leon Britton, Wayne Routledge, all senior pros. Always a constant.
"They would be the ones saying 'listen guys, these things happen in football' to the younger players like myself, who it was quite foreign to.
"We definitely had to lean on them at times. They really did keep the group together.
"It was tough, but ultimately managers get judged on success and failures and they're the ones for the chop, unfortunately."
Mawson insists he enjoyed playing under all four of the coaches he worked with during his two-year spell in SA1, but one clearly sticks out ahead of the rest.
"Carlos Carvalhal just brought in such a positive outlook on life," he remembers. "It was gutting we couldn't stay up. Not just for the club and the area, but for him as well.
"He gave everything. All of his emotion.
"He really, really genuinely loved Swansea, and he was such a great guy as well.
"He was always trying to take the pressure off us and it did help. We got some really good results, but then we lose to sides that were lesser in the league.
"Ultimately, you need to be beating those sides to stay in the league and we didn't do that. So it ended low. But again, all I've got is fond memories."
Swansea's relegation was clearly painful for all involved, but listening to Mawson talk about that season, it's clear he still finds it hard to really pinpoint any one underlying reason for their failure.
"I think it was a combination of things," he added. "We weren't performing as well as we could have been. We were plagued by injuries too, I remember.
"Leroy Fer tore his Achilles, then Nathan Dyer did exactly the same thing, which was mad because you hear about knee injuries more predominantly and maybe spraining your ankle.
"But for two players to rupture an Achilles at the same time, it just wasn't a good sign.
"I think it was also a combination of individual errors. I include myself in that, definitely. Moments of lapses in concentration.
"I'm not going to hammer managers. That's not me. Maybe they made mistakes too, but ultimately you send a team out to try to execute a game plan and that's on us. So it was a big down point. A low point getting relegated. But that's football. You learn from it. You've got to kick on."
But as bleak as things were for the Swans, the season was still something of a success on a personal level for Mawson.
Just a couple of months after that sensational performance against Liverpool, he was called up to the England squad for the friendlies against Italy and the Netherlands.
It's difficult not to feel that turning that call-up into a cap is perhaps one of his biggest unfulfilled career ambitions.
"It was cool to be called up," he said. "It was hard. Again it was all really foreign to me. Obviously I'd been with the 21s, but the step up to that was massive.
"But it's cool to say I was called up. I wish I could have just had maybe five seconds or something to say I'd actually played for England!
"But it was a highlight. A moment I'll always remember."
The fact Fulham paid £20million to take Mawson back to the Premier League in the summer of 2018 showed just how high his stock remained, despite Swansea's relegation. But it's probably fair to say fans at Craven Cottage seldom saw the best of what he had to offer. Nor did the supports at Bristol City, who watched him turn in just 11 appearances during a disappointing loan spell during the 2020-21 season.
"Fulham didn't quite go the way I wanted," he admits.
"It was a culmination of things. Injuries don't help. But managers also want certain things. I'm quite outspoken in terms of if I don't agree with certain things, I'll voice my opinion.
"I'm not going to just sit around and do something for whatever reason and go against myself.
"I guess I just got comfortable with not being involved and not playing as much, which was annoying and sad but there's only so much you can do to put yourself forward.
"The managers I played under know that. It's not like I was just sacking it off. That's not me. But sometimes if managers want certain things, I respect that. I left with two promotions, winning the league last year. So it's not like I'm leaving with negative images.
"But I do wish it would have gone differently. Then again, I reckon if I'd signed anywhere with this knee and with the management of it, it was going to finish me anyway.
"That's life."
After being released by the Cottagers, the move back to Wycombe last summer clearly helped keep the embers of his love for the game smouldering just a little longer, and his appreciation for the support from the Chairboys will likely be there for all to see come Saturday afternoon.
But even now, the Swans are clearly never too far from his thoughts, and the feeling appears to be mutual.
"Funnily enough the night I made the announcement I had a nice message from Oli McBurnie," he says with a smile.
"I showed it to my missus and all she did was just start singing 'Ohhh Oli McBurnie'.
"(Kyle) Naughton messaged me, Wayne Routledge, a few of the boys. It was nice. It was kind.
"There's been a rebuild at the club, and I think Russell Martin's doing a fantastic job. You can see the old 'Swansea Way' starting to come back in the players.
"Dominating possession, and it's good. The signs are definitely improving. The club's slowly getting back to a situation where it can try to get back to the Premier League and I think he's the man to do it."
But while he's interested to see what the future holds for his former club, he hasn't yet figured out what comes next now he's hung up his boots.
"I haven't really thought about it," he concludes. "I've just been playing golf! I wish I was good enough to take that up full-time. That would be great. Nothing's set in concrete yet. We might go away for a bit. My missus travelled before we got together, and loved it. With football she's been travelling in a different sense all around the country and we've lived all over. So now I just want to let her have some time to enjoy it and drag me around wherever.
"Then when we get back we can start making some decisions over what to do. I don't know whether that's football-based. Football's all I know.
"I'm just very fortunate to have had a career. I haven't got just one thing in mind, I've got a few things in the back of my mind at the moment.
"For now, I'm just enjoying a bit of golf."
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