Two years ago, the play off final felt like an ‘after the Lord Mayor’s show’ kind of moment. We’d built up the semi-final games against Portsmouth as being far more important than whoever we went on to play at Wembley. There was a hatred between Portsmouth and Sunderland fans that had built up and it was more like a derby atmosphere than any other game I’ve ever experienced.
Now imagine the same story but it actually was a derby. And that’s what happened in 1990.
The 1990 play offs were our first experience of a ‘real’ play off after the bizarre structure three years earlier. Semi final home and away and then a trip to Wembley. At the beginning of the year, we’d have taken your hand off to just reach the play offs but an improvement in form saw us win 8 out of 12 going into the last game of the season. The play offs were in our hands and, more importantly, a win in our final game and we’d face Swindon or Blackburn in the semi finals and avoid Newcastle, the team who’d finished comfortably in third place and, of the teams in the play off places, were by far the bes…, I’m sorry, they were the bes… look, they were ok. But they weren’t as good as Leeds or Sheffield United which is why they’d finished third.
All we needed was to draw at home to Oldham on the last day and we’d finish fourth and play Swindon home and away. So, as you’d expect, we lost 3-2.
Newcastle became the focus for all of us. Home first, of course, after finishing 6 points behind them. And any sort of lead was the plan, then keep them out at St James Park. No one cared about Wembley, but we knew getting there would have meant we’d achieved something special. And so we played them. And it was going to be a 0-0 draw as we entered stoppage time. Then, a ball was played over the top for Marco to chase by Paul Hardyman. He got into the penalty area and was brought down, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind it was a penalty, it was a grievous attack by Mark Stimpson, assault, he had to be red carded (watching it back later it was a great tackle).
Imagine blowing the result you wanted and your left back getting red carded deep into stoppage time. How we laughed.
But he was only shown a yellow. And then our left back stepped up to take the penalty. Hardyman realised that this was a massive opportunity. The chance of a lifetime. Not, you understand, a chance to give us the lead going into the away leg of the division 2 play-off, but rather a chance to kick John Burridge, one of football’s most instantly dislikeable people, in the face. And, I think he took the right choice. A bang average penalty deliberately played to Burridge’s stronger side to position the Roman-emperor-look-a-like exactly where he wanted him and a follow up of pure intent saw Hardyman attempt GBH on the prone keeper. It was a thing of beauty. This time the ref did produce the red card and, in a matter of a few seconds, blowing the result and getting your left back sent off had become far less amusing.
But Hardyman knew. He knew he could trust his team mates to go to St James’ Park and win 2-0 with goals from Gates and Gabbiadini (or Gabudini as the commentator always insisted he was called). Even when the Mags brought on about 5,000 substitutes for the last few seconds, they couldn’t overturn the result. We’d done it. We were going to Wembley. Just beat Swindon and we had completed our return from Division 3 in only three years.
Swindon had replaced their manager a couple of months earlier in extraordinary circumstances which saw their Chairman, then manager, Lou Macari and captain, Colin Calderwood, arrested and questioned over financial irregularities. The new manager, Ossie Ardiles, improved their form and, as Chas and Dave would have expected, he was going to Wembley. This time, however, his knees were trembly at what was likely to follow. The financial position was still hanging over them and there were suggestions before the game that they might be prevented from going up whatever happened on the day.
What did happen was a game almost as tedious as the Charlton game two years ago. A 1-0 win to Swindon thanks to a massive deflection from our legendary colossus of a captain and we all went home to prepare for another season in division 2. But then, weirdly, we got to beat Newcastle all over again. But this time in the Football League boardroom.
Swindon were relegated to division 3 (though they eventually backed down and let them stay in division 2), their chairman was sent to prison for 6 months and their chief accountant only just stayed out of prison on probation.
So, who would go up was the question in the North East? The team who finished third or the team who got to the play off final? As someone who dislikes the logic of the play offs and believes the top three should go up automatically, I had some sympathy for the view that the third best team over the course of a season should be promoted but, once the season had decided to have play offs, it had to be us to go up. Right? Well, yes, the decision was that we should take Swindon’s place in the top flight. The only problem was we weren’t ready. Denis Smith went on to say we could have done with another year before we went up and, he was right. The inevitable happened and we were relegated straight back to the second division. By then Newcastle had appointed Ossie to be their manager and had gone nowhere fast (bonus points to anyone who can name the brief caretaker manager) and Swindon had just avoided relegation.
At this point we knew play-offs weren’t for us.
Or maybe it’d be third time lucky…
