There are ways to say goodbye. Tommy Watson’s last few minutes as a Sunderland player proved their last few in the Football League. Their eight-year exile from the top flight was ended by a player who was just 11 when they were last relegated from the Premier League. As they won the £200m match, the richest game in world football, they may not need the millions they will bank from Watson’s impending move to Brighton.
But if he is going to the Premier League, he departed by dragging them up with him, a 95th-minute winner transporting the Roker Roar, the sound of the Stadium of Light, to Wembley. It was quite a comeback by Sunderland: on the day, after Sheffield United dominated the first half to lead, and over the last four seasons.
They have come a long way in a short time. Three-and-a-half years ago, Sunderland lost 6-0 at Bolton in League One and sacked Lee Johnson. Then, given their history, fanbase and stadium, they were arguably English football’s greatest underachievers.
Three weeks ago, no club had ever gone into the play-offs in worse form than Sunderland, with five straight losses. But they have become specialists in turnarounds. Regis Le Bris, an unknown French appointment has proved an inspired choice as manager, and they are a Premier League club again.
One of the grand old clubs have done it with youth. Kyril Louis-Dreyfus is the boy king of an owner. Eliezer Mayenda was the youngest scorer in a Championship play-off final for 32 years. The 20-year-old had that status for all of 19 minutes, until the 19-year-old Watson surpassed him.
His was already a famous name on Wearside. Sunderland won three league titles under Tom Watson in the 1890s; some 130 years later, Tommy Watson scored the goal to take them into the Premier League. Many another who has gone down in Sunderland folklore was here to see it: Jim Montgomery and Peter Reid, Niall Quinn and Kevin Phillips, Jermain Defoe and Jordan Henderson, Sunderland’s past now knowing their future includes the top flight.
A club who waited almost half a century for a Wembley win after the 1973 FA Cup now have three in five seasons, the last two bringing promotion. For the second time in three months, fans from the north-east were jubilant at Wembley. First Newcastle, then Sunderland: previously success-starved rivals have had plenty to enjoy this year.
The curse instead sticks resolutely to Sheffield United. They have won promotion in a Test match but never in a play-off, despite 10 attempts. Their last victory at Wembley was 100 years ago, in 1925. Good things are supposed to come to those who wait. Not for United.
The side who started the season bottom of the table, subtracted points, who claimed 92 to finish on 90, who took the lead at Wembley and had their chances to double it instead face another season in the second tier. Football has a cruelty: for Chris Wilder, who stood on the brink of a third promotion with his boyhood club; for Kieffer Moore, who almost headed the Blades into the lead after 70 seconds, with Anthony Patterson making a magnificent save.
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A goal did indeed stem from Moore: but Sunderland’s winner. He got the inadvertent assist, United target man instead picking out the Sunderland substitute. Watson placed his shot in the far corner.
He hails from County Durham. The Spaniard Mayenda was signed from Sochaux two years ago, part of Sunderland’s policy of buying young, and his goal was more emphatic, rifled into the top corner after a wonderful, defence-splitting pass from Patrick Roberts. If it suggested that Roberts should have started – and that maybe Le Bris recovered after getting his initial 11 wrong – Sunderland’s substitutes had the far greater impact as United lost their way.
The first Sunderland change had to come early. Luke O’Nien seemed to dislocate his shoulder as Moore won his second-minute header. Yet Sunderland’s spirit animal of a centre-back was bounding down the touchline in celebration when Mayenda struck, partying through the pain barrier with his arm in a sling.
For Sunderland, a fantastic finish followed a subdued start. In a game of two halves, they only turned up for one. It proved enough.
They had conceded when a devastating counter-attack brought a delightful, dinked finish. A rare attack was then the worst form of defence for them, Gustavo Hamer leading the break after a Sunderland corner and feeding Tyrese Campbell, who lifted a shot over Patterson. But Hamer, the Championship’s player of the season, and Campbell, a footballer picked up on a free transfer by Wilder, were removed at 1-0 up, powerless as they were stripped of the tag of heroes.
United thought they had doubled their lead and should have done. Harrison Burrows had a volley disallowed because Vinicius Souza was offside and in Patterson’s line of sight. Then the substitute Andre Brooks capitalised on Dennis Cirkin’s mistake. It took a fine save from Patterson to deny him. He kept Sunderland in the game and they responded. First with Mayenda, then Watson, each far too young to remember Quinn and Phillips, each now joining them in Sunderland’s hall of fame.
Indeed, Watson now joins them in Sunderland’s past. Just the third goal of his fledgling career may forever remain the biggest and the most celebrated. It will almost certainly forever prove the most lucrative. But it was about so much more than the £200m.
