Danny Pearce scored the goal of the season twice in eleven days — a dipping volley from the edge of the box against Sheffield Blades, then a mazy solo run through four defenders against Bristol Colliers that's already being replayed on every sports bulletin in the country. He is, by a distance, the most talented player outside the top three clubs in the Elite Division.
He is also, by his own manager's private admission, "exhausting." Three days after the Bristol goal, Pearce was sent home from training after an altercation with the club's fitness coach over a recovery session he considered pointless. It wasn't the first time. Teammates describe him as brilliant and impossible in roughly equal measure — the sort of player who will produce a piece of skill nobody else in the division can manage, then miss the following morning's recovery run because he "felt he'd earned a lie-in."
His manager, under pressure of his own from a mid-table season, is caught in an impossible spot: drop Pearce and lose the one player capable of winning a match single-handedly; keep indulging him and risk a dressing room that's already started to grumble about one rule for Danny and another for everyone else. Two senior players raised it directly in a closed-doors meeting last week, according to sources inside the club who weren't authorised to discuss it publicly.
For now, Pearce keeps playing, and keeps scoring. Whether that lasts until May, or whether the dressing room finally has enough, is one of the more closely watched subplots left in this final Elite Division season.