There is a number in football that every relegation-threatened side carries with them like a talisman, and for the Rovers this season that number was 46. Forty-six points. The line above which no Bobington side has ever been relegated in the 94-year history of the Premier Division. On Saturday evening, at twenty minutes past five, Nadia Osei swept in her second goal of the afternoon and the old stadium exhaled.

Forty-six. They are safe.

Rovers 3, Millhaven 1. It sounds comfortable. It was not, for the first half-hour, anything of the sort.

Millhaven arrived at Bridgewater with nothing to lose and played like it. Their high press troubled Rovers early, and it took Orin Blackshaw — imperious in the air all afternoon — to head clear two dangerous crosses in the opening ten minutes. Marsh tipped a dipping effort from Millhaven’s Rees over the bar at 11 minutes, and for a spell the visiting side looked the more likely.

Then Osei happened.

Her first, on 14 minutes, was clinical: a ball over the top from Dunmore, a first touch that killed it dead, and a low finish past the goalkeeper’s trailing hand. Her 13th of the season. The stadium roared, and the nerves began to settle.

Millhaven, to their credit, did not fold. They pressed Rovers back in the second quarter and might have equalised twice — once through Rees, whose volley struck the post at 31 minutes, and once through a goalmouth scramble that ended with Cahill hacking clear on the line.

But on 52 minutes, Kael Dunmore settled any lingering doubt. He received the ball thirty yards from goal, looked up once, and hit a curling strike with his left foot that dipped over the goalkeeper and into the top corner. It was the kind of goal that silences a ground — not in disappointment, but in the brief, breathless recognition that something extraordinary has just occurred. Bridgewater erupted.

Millhaven’s Rees pulled one back on 78 minutes, a neat finish from the edge of the box that deserved better than a mere consolation, but Osei restored the three-goal margin with seven minutes remaining — a close-range tap-in from a Harte cross that was, by her standards, almost perfunctory.

Attendance: 46,100. Rovers’ largest home crowd since the cup final.

The full-time whistle brought scenes of uncomplicated relief. Phillipa Corbett, standing in her technical area with arms folded for most of the second half, was embraced by Blackshaw as the defender came off the pitch. Theo Harwick, who has grown from a nervous deputy into a commanding centre-back over the course of this extraordinary spring, applauded the Bramblegate End with both hands above his head.

Rovers now have 46 points from 33 matches and sit 14th, 12 clear of the relegation places with five matches remaining. They have won five of their last six and are unbeaten in eight — a run that includes victories over Ironhall United, Thornbury Academicals’ conquerors Port Caravel, and now Millhaven.

“We came into this season hearing that we weren’t good enough,” said Corbett. “The players have answered that. They’ve answered it every Saturday for two months.”

She was not asked about her contract, which expires at the end of the season. She did not volunteer anything on the subject. The board, according to sources close to the club, will meet this week.

Osei’s 14 league goals make her the division’s fourth-highest scorer, behind only Caravel City’s Kessler (19), Thornbury’s Innes (17), and Ironhall’s Cole (14, level with Osei). For a player who was nursing a hamstring strain in February, it is a remarkable campaign.

“She’s the best finisher I’ve coached,” said Corbett, simply. “And she’d say it was all about the service.”

It was not. It was about a good deal more than that.