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'Til The End - The Story of Sunderland’s Championship Escape

Aug 6, 2025 — 8 min read
'Til The End - The Story of Sunderland’s Championship Escape
'Til The End: Tommy Watson's 95th-minute winner claws Sunderland back to the promised land of the Premier League.

Setting the Scene

The great Liverpool manager Bill Shankly once said you have to "claw your way out of the second division”, and that statement still rings true today.

Sunderland entered the 2024/25 Sky Bet Championship Playoffs coming off the back of a five-game losing streak, with no wins since the first match of April. Injuries to pivotal players such as Enzo Le Fee, Dan Ballard, Jobe Bellingham, and Romaine Mundle left a depleted squad, losing to supposedly inferior sides like Swansea, Oxford United, and QPR. A demoralised fanbase prepared for further playoff disappointment, heading into a bout against a rival club with decades of baggage to unpack.

Coventry.

A rivalry spanning generations, leaping across countless county borders, and endless hours on a stuffy coach on the M1, Sunderland does not like Coventry. The event that sparked 50+ years of distaste took place on the final day of the 1976/77 First Division season.

Sunderland would survive relegation with a point against Everton, or any result except a draw between Coventry and Bristol City. 'Allegedly', Jimmy Hill, the managing director for Coventry, orchestrated a delay to kickoff by 15 minutes, while displaying the 2-0 victory for Everton on the Highfield Road scoreboards, as the match played out to a 2-2 draw, relegating Sunderland. All of this is speculation, of course, as an inquiry into the incident cleared Coventry of all wrongdoing, but that didn't change a thing for the Sunderland faithful.

That five-decade-old tangent starts to show the disdain between the two sides and their fanbases, for the Mackems and the Sky-Blues, it's personal. Head-to-head form compounded the Mackem trepidation, with the Black Cats not winning away at Coventry since 1985, that's 13 straight defeats, including most recently, a 3-0 demolition in March, at the hands of a Haji Wright hat-trick.

So when Milan Van Ewijk slid a misplaced backpass straight to Eliezer Mayenda, who calmly slotted home the winner in the 88th minute, Wearsiders were beside themselves with the ecstasy and relief of finally winning in Coventry.

The rhetoric coming from the club's social accounts was stoic and unified in the idea that the job was not yet finished.

The job was indeed not finished; Sunderland have let first-leg playoff advantages slip in the past, most recently in 2023 against Luton, for example. Regis Le Bris, the players, the fans, everyone knew the toughest task was to come.

It took 76 minutes for Coventry to tie the fixture on aggregate. Those 76 minutes felt like the longest ever endured. The next 46 minutes into extra time felt like an eternity. Destined for penalties, destined for heartbreak, destined for a ninth season away from the promised land. Nearly two minutes into added time, Enzo Le Fee kisses the ball and places it down, ready to take what seemed like a futile corner.

“Plenty of movement inside the box”

Dan Ballard had been a somewhat understated figure across the season. Le Bris' preferred centre-back pairing being loanee Chris Mepham and cult hero Luke O'Nien, leaving Ballard to come off the bench for most of the season. He'd only recently come back from a hamstring problem before the playoffs, but he came back with a bang, dominant across both legs with concrete wall-esque defending, towering over Sky-Blues for clearances and crunching tackles. Le Fee's corner swings into the box...

121 minutes and 59 seconds. I still don't have words for this moment. Sunderland's social media team didn't either. For me and my father, stunned silence, mouth open wide, hands on the back of our heads, tears in our eyes.

Dan Ballard folded himself like a lawn chair to get his head on the end of Le Fee's whipped cross, as the ball miraculously sails onto the underside of the crossbar, nestling into the net as Wearside erupts. Coventry, finally, vanquished in the most 'playoff' way possible.

We won't be home for tea.

For any English club, a trip to Wembley is a pilgrimage. A hard-earned reward for excellence in whichever league or cup your club participates in. However, for Sunderland, it's historically a place of pain and suffering for the fans, bookended by six-hour coach trips each way.

Since the great Bob Stokoe led the second division Sunderland past the dominant force of Leeds United in the 1973 FA Cup Final, Sunderland had lost seven of their last eight appearances at the home of English football, including a gut-wrenching League One Playoff final defeat in 2019 at the hands of Charlton Athletic. However, the most recent visit provided fruit; the 2022 League One Playoff final saw Sunderland swat away Wycombe Wanderers, finally mercifully ending the Wearsiders' stay in the third division.

Historical results gave the fans a reason to worry, while the recent uptick in form under the arch gave us hope, as the Mackems descended upon North London for the biggest game since Premier League relegation in 2017.

My view leaving Wembley Park Tube Station approximately 90 minutes before kickoff.

I managed to get a ticket to this pivotal match, descending upon the hallowed ground with my father, uncle, and grandma, although we wouldn't be sitting together, but in the same block. The moods between the two fan bases portrayed a stark contrast. The Mackems knew they were underdogs, but didn't show it, chanting and building up a hyped atmosphere on the west side of Wembley. Whereas, Sheffield United fans were quieter and visibly nervous, a stark inverse of how the fixture should have played out.

A panoramic image of my view inside of Wembley as the players exit the tunnel.

Once inside the ground, Sunderland had sold out their end, while the Blades' end had large areas of unsold tickets. The buildup to the match was dominated by the swathes of Wearsiders, with chants, cheers, and club tifos and banners being unfurled as the teams entered the pitch.

Sunderland's pre-match tifos and banners

The Match.

Pre-match went by in a flash, and all of a sudden, the match kicked off. Patterson made a crucial save barely two minutes in, scrambling and reaching left to keep Kieffer Moore's header out of the net, although Luke O'Nien injured his shoulder in that phase of play, ending his match and demoralising the Mackem faithful. I remember thinking "well, that's that then" as one of the spiritual leaders of our team writhed in pain on the Wembley turf.

Later on, a failed Sunderland corner left Gus Hamer to expertly thread a cross in to Tyrese Campbell, who opened the scoring for the Blades. The Sunderland end fell silent as the outnumbered Sheffield United fans erupted. I was utterly deflated; it already felt like it was going to be one of those days.

Then, a Sheffield United corner deflected out to Harrison Burrows, who half-volleys it past Patterson to make it 2-0. It was a fine strike, perhaps the best I had ever seen in person. I wanted the ground to swallow me whole, game over. However, the referee gave the Mackems a reprieve, with VAR revealing that there were Blades players in an offside position blocking the keeper's view, no goal. I, and the entire western end of Wembley, celebrated that news like we had scored ourselves. This isn't over.

Half-time came and went, still 1-0 down, but the Sunderland players had come out of the dressing room a different team, lively, creative, positive, yet still behind and needing answers. Regis Le Bris made two of the most important substitutions in the club's recent history, bringing off captain Dan Neil and winger Romaine Mundle, both of whom had been subpar during the match, for striker Wilson Isidor and young winger Tommy Watson.

Tommy Watson had been a bright spark off the bench for Sunderland this season, playing well as a youngster during the latter half of the season while our winger options were limited due to injuries. He had used that leverage to find a move away to Brighton for £10 million, to be completed in the summer. Sunderland fans felt blindsided by the move, seeing one of our own leave us before he'd really made a mark, but thankful for the hefty price the Seagulls paid for him. Young Tommy didn't feature in either semi-final leg against Coventry, yet Le Bris called upon his number at the most desperate hour of need. Fans around me in the ground doubted that decision...

It took only three minutes for the Sunderland fans to be proved wrong, as Watson played a crucial part in the 77th-minute equaliser. Jobe Bellingham flicked down an awkward aerial ball around the halfway line, Tommy Watson gets a flick on the ball to free up Enzo Le Fee, who unlocks Patrick Roberts, who threads an inch-perfect pass to Eliezer Mayenda in the box, one touch, and the ball is fired into the roof of the net. Finally. A scrappy yet industrious move gets Sunderland level. The scenes up in the gods of Wembley Stadium were electric, as the injured Luke O'Nien sprints down the touchline to join the celebrations below.

The rest of the game sped by in a flash. Suddenly, it was added time, and we were facing extra time. Again. It was bad enough of a feeling sitting at home on the sofa for the semi-final, but in the stadium, faced with that prospect, I felt like I could collapse with nerves and dread of what was to come...

Kieffer Moore.

Sunderland had courted Kieffer Moore in previous windows, looking for a veteran striker to bring some experience to our squad in a position that was non-existent for us the season before. When he rejected the club's advances and signed instead for Sheffield United, who would've known Kieffer would assist the biggest goal in Sunderland's recent history. 95 long and arduous minutes into the richest game in football, facing his own goal at the halfway line, Moore loosely sprayed a pass towards his midfield. In steps the young 19-year-old lifelong Mackem from Horden. Two touches, a curved, bobbling shot, which must have bounced 70 times, and took an eternity to reach its destination; the bottom right corner of the westerly goal at Wembley Stadium.

Chaos, utter chaos. Strangers I had never met 95 minutes prior were hugging me, tears, jubilation, confusion, bewilderment.

Due to an injury to Ben Brereton Diaz and the delay for the celebrations, added time dragged on for a further seven minutes. The game felt like it would never end, then from a throw in front of the dugouts, the final whistle blew...

Tommy Watson, with one swift stroke of a football boot, had sent Sunderland back to the promised land, with the final kick of the ball in his Sunderland career. He left it; 'til the end.

Published by
Ed Brown
Ed Brown
Ed Brown is a Journalism graduate from the University of Winchester. After graduating in 2023, he is looking to build a career in the Sports Journalism industry.
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