Preston North End and Huddersfield Town faced each other at Everton’s former home.

You could almost sense the sighs from both sides of the Pennines when the Carabao Cup first-round draw matched Preston North End with Huddersfield Town.

Although the two clubs have spent the past two years in different divisions, they had already been given more than enough chances to tire of each other after being paired in both the League Cup and the FA Cup during 2022/23.

Deepdale has hardly been a happy venue for Huddersfield over the years either. The Terriers’ 2-1 Championship win on Boxing Day 2022 – right in the middle of that season when the sides met four times – remains their only victory there in 21 visits since 1969.

Yet an unusual switch of venue turned this tie into a genuine novelty. Preston’s relaid pitch was not going to be ready in time for the fixture, meaning an alternative ground had to be found.

Huddersfield offered to swap the tie and host the match themselves, but that proposal was turned down. Instead, the game was staged at Goodison Park and in the process may have become the final competitive men’s fixture ever played at the famous old stadium.

There were many supporters of both clubs who had never previously been to Everton. Huddersfield had only made the journey there four times since 1971, while Preston had done so just twice since 1961, the most recent being for a League Cup tie in 2004. All of a sudden, a stadium that had long remained an unticked box in the mind could now be crossed off.

From the outside, the stadium still looks respectable enough, and reminders of Everton’s history remained all around the place. Most notably, Z Cars was played half an hour before kick-off, while Stuart McCall was in the Preston dugout, still sporting the same haircut he has had since 1988.

But inside, the picture was very different. Only the lower tiers of the Goodison Road stand and the Gwladys Street end, along with the Park End stand, were open to supporters. The Bullens Road stand had been entirely draped in tarpaulin carrying the words ‘Welcome to Goodison Park, the home of Everton Women’.

The upper tier of the Goodison Road stand is still being used by the press and various club officials from both teams, but many of the seats around the press box have already been ripped out and removed. Some of those dismantled seats still sit in the sort of plastic crates supermarkets use for home deliveries.

The sense of post-apocalyptic emptiness is heightened by the generous use of yellow and black tape to stop media members wandering off to inspect the wreckage and pocket a souvenir – something that, in hindsight, I rather wish I had done anyway for my Everton-supporting brother-in-law.

In a way, it felt fitting that Preston and Huddersfield were the teams involved. These are two clubs whose histories are full of glorious achievements from another era – England’s first side to win back-to-back league titles against the first team to make it three in a row, and opponents in two FA Cup finals in the 1920s and 1930s – but who have also become accustomed to decade after decade of lower-league football.

The occasion must have felt especially surreal for Huddersfield captain Ryan Ledson, a Scouser who came through Everton’s youth system and then spent seven happy years at Preston before moving across the Pennines last summer.

“I don’t know Everton as being in the new stadium,” he said at Town’s pre-match press conference. “I only know Everton as Goodison Park. I was a ball boy there. I grew up there from the age of four or five.

“It’s going to be a special afternoon for me and, on a personal level, to be back there, and obviously to play against the club where I spent so many years.

“It’s going to be the last time I’m ever going to play there, isn’t it? So it’s a moment for me and my family to cherish.”

Unfortunately for Ledson, that is not how events unfolded.

Preston were reduced to 10 men after only 21 minutes and then fell behind to a Radinio Balker header seven minutes before half-time. Even so, they emerged much stronger after the break and snatched a 93rd-minute equaliser through new signing Jusef Erabi.

That sent the match straight to penalties – and the first player to walk up at the Gwladys Street end was Ledson.

Preston goalkeeper Daniel Iversen saved his penalty and then also kept out Marcus Harness. Everton supporters may enjoy the detail that Ledson is, in fact, a Red.

Huddersfield’s Sunderland loanee Matty Young then saved Andrew Moran’s effort in reply, but former Huddersfield player Delano Burgzorg scored the decisive penalty to put Preston through.

All in all, the entire occasion carried an odd, dream-like feeling – like an imaginary football scenario that somehow really did take place.