Spend long enough down the YouTube rabbit hole and it's surprising what you can turn up. In Carlisle United's case, a few gems waiting to be unearthed from those times when they were least expected.

Take the 1991/2 season, by most measures the worst in the Blues' history: bottom of the Football League, skint, saved from non-league by Aldershot's collapse, hints at a part-time future, not much life, even less hope.

Except, that is, the odd moment of genuine joy, such as a 2-1 home victory against Crewe that October. The highlight of that game was a quite wonderful goal by Tony Fyfe - the ball bouncing, taken over his shoulder, and dispatched into the net with a soaring left-footed volley.

In a barren time, that goal will have brightened a few weekends. It will have reminded some, despite the woes that can attach themselves to down-at-heel clubs, why the game can still be worth the candle.

Like the drive down the middle in a round of hacks, like the delivery that clips the bail after all the others have disappeared around the park, we need these rare gems to keep us coming back, to tease and tantalise, to deceive us that it can always be this good.

Something to suspend reality, almost. This, you might sense, is quite some build-up to an item about a goal from a midfielder on loan from Fleetwood Town but I bet, as Jack Sowerby scored Carlisle's third at Oldham last weekend, those with the best seats in the house - United's fans, behind the goal - felt they hadn't enjoyed a moment like that for a little while.

This isn't a 91/92 era at Carlisle, for all its challenges, but it had not been a promising period. Two home defeats in four days without so much as a goal, and the lowest Brunton Park league crowd for three-and-a-half years.

That suggested a certain trajectory which John Sheridan and his players were fighting to confront. What could not be said is that every last supporter was giddy at the thought of imminent success. Hence there are frowns and furrowed brows when considering the Blues, a fact of lower-league life.

That makes a little jewel all the better. There is many a pointless debate about what makes one goal superior to another, a preference for a 30-yard rocket against an inventive team effort, but if it looks good, and feels good, why bother going further?

Sowerby's goal was the kind that doesn't lose appeal each time you see it. First, the elegant turn which sent one Oldham player across the Pennines, and then, in the same stride, a shimmy to con another defender. Then, finally, the smooth, low finish.

It wasn't what you normally see in the middle section of the fourth division, even if technique, especially that of loanees from higher levels, is improved generally to that often seen in older decades.

It was, of course, made even more enjoyable for knowing that Sowerby didn’t particularly realise what he was doing. "Whatever it was that I did just came naturally," he told the club's website; a grain of false modesty, you suspect, for such a hectic game as football is all about mastering the split-second, about creating space where none appears to exist.

It was perhaps not as calculated as Michael Bridges' goal against Darlington in 2006 but it brought similar things to mind when it came to taking a couple of opponents out of the equation with an elegant sleight of foot - in Bridges' case, a right-footed step over, a caress with the left, a sudden meadow of space, a brutal shot.

One of the defenders trying to contain Bridges in that little episode turned 360 degrees, so foxed was he by the manoeuvre. Darlington's pitch that day was an uneven, potholed mess, more brown than green, yet for a few seconds Bridges made it seen like ice.

That was in a title-winning campaign, and excellence from Bridges was hardly a revelation. Yet there was still a rare quality about it, and you could sense the joy bursting from those behind the goal: one of ours, doing that.

Those times of euphoria, of course, make the grimier days worth it. They take the bitter edge away from, for instance, Carlisle 0 Grimsby 1 and all its dispiriting baggage, for those who have travelled from near or far.

Whilst watching the opening exchanges at Boundary Park last weekend - a job made trickier by United's mistaken fielding of two number sixes - my eye was drawn to a tweet from someone in the Chaddy Road End seats.

I hope he doesn't mind that I reproduce it here - Phil Jones, a Carlisle fan, writing: "Having travelled all the way from New Zealand for 3 games, no goals & no points so far in the first 2! Oldham away is my last hope. Cmon @officialcufc, let's get a goal and 3 points today."

No doubt the distant sight of Hallam Hope nodding home from a couple of inches was pleasing indeed, likewise the closer-up view of Ashley Nadesan clipping Carlisle's second high into the net in the second half. But I'd wager it was number three, a minute or two later, that made the trip feel particularly worthwhile, that raised an extra smile on the long flight home, that made the prospect of coming back again a little less bleak than it might have been a few days before.

Three-nil up on the road and a little swagger thrown in. Does it get much better? Yes, perhaps, when trophies and promotions are won, when cup finals are reached.

There is much to be said, though, for the smaller thing that lifts, that implants a new memory when it wasn't at all what you - or even the person responsible - had expected. The joy of a moment, rich and untainted.