One of those whatever-could-go-wrong … did-go-wrong games.

Anyone who has spent any time in sports journalism probably can anticipate several of the directions in which this is going.

Big game, isolated stadium, late start, game-changing scoring in the last seconds, basic error of fact not caught, late newspaper. This one had it all.

Al Jazira at Baniyas, the top teams in the Pro League, the night after watching the two worst teams.

Jazira held a 10-point lead over Baniyas, but I still wanted to cover this one — even if it meant I would miss the gala third birthday party of The National. (And I did.)

First, getting to the stadium. Baniyas is in a smallish town just a few miles outside of Abu Dhabi City, but no one living in the capital knows it as anything other than “that wide spot on the Sheikh Zayed Highway.”

The cabbie I flagged down outside The National had zero idea where this “Baniyas Stadium” was. None. I showed him some fairly specific maps I had printed out, with writing in both Arabic and English, and he just stared at them like they were Aramaic. He had one map upside down till I suggested he spin it 180 degrees.

So, a 30-minute commute turned into 45 as we got lost, and lost again, and he refused to follow my insistence that “those big lights over there” must have been a stadium.

So, in the stadium only 15 minutes before kickoff, and the start lists have already been distributed, so I am doing without. Luckily, I know most of Baniyas’s guys and all of Jazira’s. The starters, anyway.

No score at halftime. And did I mention the game started at 8:45 p.m.? Ridiculously late. And I have a 10:40 deadline — which basically is when the match will end. Which works, as long as nothing crucial happens in the last 10-15 minutes. A big if.

Good match. Nice, new (if small) stadium for one of the league’s rising franchises. (Baniyas was in a lower division just two years ago.) Jazira looks a little tired, a little jaded, probably because just four days before it had played arch-rival Al Wahda in the President’s Cup final before 37,000 in The Big Stadium in Abu Dhabi. And had won.

No score, at halftime. And I’ve got to start writing. I bang out 200 words on what happened to that point, which was mostly missed opportunities by the home team. And an injury to one of Jazira’s key foreigners, Matias Delgado, the Argentine midfielder, who hobbled off.

Second half on, and now I’m hardly watching the game. Banging out a lead about how the teams fought to a 0-0 tie.

In the 65th minute, Baniyas scores; the 6-foot-4 Sengalese striker Andre Senghor picks up his league-leading 15th goal. Crowd goes wild.

This is a big deal. Jazira has not lost a league game this year, and a Baniyas victory would leave them seven points behind with six matches to play. It would give them a chance to win the league, that is,

So, I get busy writing that, about how feisty young Baniyas rose up and smote the league leaders. It’s 10:15 by now, and I can’t wait to have 550 words ready to go.

I’ve just about got it wrapped up when the worst possible event occurs: Jazira scores in the third minute of extra time. I didn’t see it, of course. I was staring at this laptop and editing my “Baniyas wins” story. Jazira fans jumping out of their seats in the end zone to my left is my tip. I have a TV in front of me, and watch the replays, but it’s hazy who is doing what. The cross was made by a substitute, and I’m trying to figure out who he is … and the goal looks like it might be an own-goal, but the Pro League is famous (in my mind) for not ruling “own goal” and, instead, calling it a goal for the closest attacking player.

Plus, the PA announcer announces the goal as being scored by a Jazira guy, so he goes into my lead as the match ends, 60 seconds later.

After the obligatory obscenity or three, I just get moving on the new story. (Thirty years ago, I would have yanked the paper out of my typewriter and rolled in a new sheet.) Tired and battered, Jazira showed its mettle by snatching a draw from their first league defeat in more than a year, etc.

Now Baniyas’s big move in the standings … is just standing pat. Everything in the story changes. Now I have to describe two goals. I’m banging away. The clock is moving. The stadium in the middle-of-nowhere empties out. A kid tells a couple of us that “the press conference with the coaches is about to begin” — which I also need to be at for quotes for the online story I will file an hour later.

The desk has sent me an e-mail asking for my story, but I don’t see the message until I’ve logged on to send my story at 10:52. It’s late. But if you want 550 words with the correct result, that’s kind of how this is going to work, with an 8:45 start and a tying goal in the 90+3 minute. I hope that if the one production guy in the office just puts the story in the paper — which was clean, aside from having Jazira score a goal, rather than Baniyas give them one — he still can make it. Apparently, he doesn’t.

Down to the press conference. The Jazira coach already is talking. In French. With his Arabic translator. No one is doing English, aside from a guy who is whispering a translation into the ear of a competitor. At the end of the event, a friendly media guy tries to catch me up on what’s been said, but I’m not getting most of it. That’s how it works, with translations.

Also, I have no way of getting out of this stadium. It’s a mile from the town. Which is 15-20 miles from the edge of Abu Dhabi. I had anticipated some Abu Dhabi cabs circling around, but on the way in I realized that would not be the case. The stadium is a mile from anything.

I am envisioning a long walk in the dark toward the main UAE north-south highway, when I ask my English-language competitor if he can possibly take me somewhere near Abu Dhabi and drop me off in the middle of the desert — but closer to where I might find a cab. He agrees to do that, even though he lives in Dubai — which is the opposite way I want to go. Very nice of him.

In Khalifa City B (no, the new towns here don’t have very colorful names), on the other side of the main highway. he spots an Abu Dhabi cab, and drives over a vacant lot to get to it, and I wave down the cabbie, who is letting out three subcontinent guys … and I have a cab.

Over? Not quite. Riding around as a passenger for two days has made me queasy, and I’m suffering in the cab. I don’t feel any better when I get home, open up the Pro League box score and see that they have, in fact, called the tying goal an “own goal.” So I have that wrong for the morning newspaper — and to make matters worse, the headline of course has the not-scorer of the late goal in a 48-point hed.

Sigh.

It was one of those nights. Everyone who writes sports on deadline knows how it goes.