Sunderland. Dan Ballard. Bedlam.

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The game was up. The last loose change of extra time had been spent and still nothing could split Sunderland and Coventry City after 210 minutes beset by the angst of a season’s work on being placed on the line

The Stadium of Light, fraught and sweaty, braced itself for the penalty shoot-out that would decide who would progress to Wembley and the Championship play-off final. Regis Le Bris, Sunderland’s head coach, had gone as far as drafting his roster of takers and introduced Leo Hjelde for the final minute with one eye on what was to come. “He was an option, he’s not the worst,” said a smiling Le Bris afterwards, damning the defender with faint praise.

First, though, Sunderland’s shot to nothing. One last corner, the game’s 17th.

Each of the previous 16 had been fruitless but in came Enzo Le Fee’s right-footed delivery in the 122nd minute and up jumped Dan Ballard, implausibly finding himself unchallenged six yards out. The header was unconventional, stooping and scruffy, but deflecting in off the underside of the bar it triggered an explosion to wake the dead as a topless Ballard soon found himself buried beneath the bodies of team-mates.

Sunderland are on their way to Wembley!! 🤩 pic.twitter.com/MVsVLxiIco

— Sky Sports Football (@SkyFootball) May 13, 2025

The Stadium of Light has stood since 1997 but has never known chaos like it.

Its very first play-off fixture in 1998 — a 2-0 win over Sheffield United, the opponent that stands between Sunderland and the Premier League — has always been used as the atmospheric yardstick but one of that night’s goalscorers, Kevin Phillips, accepted a new zenith might have been reached 27 years on. “Tonight probably topped it,” said the club’s former favourite in his role as a Sky Sports summariser.

Sunderland, in that instant, were a club wide awake to the possibilities of how their season might end and where futures might lie. Not since 2016-17 have they been a Premier League club and those wilderness years included the ignominy of four seasons in League One.

Ballard after scoring his last-gasp winner (George Wood/Getty Images)

The revival now asks for one more step. Sunderland had struggled and fought against a Coventry side that had dominated possession across the two legs but dramatically emerged out the other side to eye Wembley’s arch.

“‘Til the End” had been Sunderland’s marketing slogan daubed around the city and at the point Ballard’s header hit the net, just one second of the two added minutes of extra-time remained.

“Fantastic, absolutely fantastic,” Le Bris told reporters shortly before midnight. “You play football for these emotions.”

A crestfallen Frank Lampard would reluctantly have agreed. “Sometimes the gods conspire against you,” said the Coventry manager. “That’s football. It’s cruel. We were the better team over two legs.”

Yet on the wrong end of a harsh 3-2 aggregate scoreline. The damage inflicted upon Coventry with a 2-1 win on Friday night proved to be Sunderland’s telling advantage once Ballard had stepped up as his team’s deserving saviour. The central defender, signed from Arsenal three years ago, was imperious across the two legs, with a total of 33 clearances made to repel Coventry.

“It’s what dreams are made of,” Ballard told Sky Sports on the pitch. “It’s some feeling.”

If Sheffield United’s 6-0 aggregate win over Bristol City told of an untroubled passage to Wembley, Sunderland’s tie with Coventry had that unyielding tension that tends to come in the Championship play-offs.

Le Bris accepted his young team had been troubled by anxiety, even after coming through the more demanding test at the Coventry Building Society Arena on Friday night.

Sunderland’s squad had revived itself from a run of five straight defeats to withstand the majority of what their opponents had to throw their way in the opening leg. That was more a victory for stoicism than style but that slender 2-1 advantage earned in the Midlands would eventually prove hugely significant.

“This was never going to be over and it’s not over that’s for sure,” said Lampard, who had turned around a first leg-deficit as Derby County manager to beat Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds United in the 2019 Championship play-offs. “Sunderland know that. There’s pressures on us both now in different ways.”

Lampard had spent time weighing up how his opponents might approach the return leg on home soil but Le Bris’ refusal to shift from a plan that delivered initial success was almost Sunderland’s undoing. A rudimentary approach was focused more on protecting than extending a lead. There was no finesse or flair and Coventry, who finished the regular season with a wet sail while the team above them floundered, were only too willing to take the game to Sunderland for another night.

Coventry had almost two thirds possession in normal time, down on the 74 per cent of the first leg, but were again allowed to dominate the ball. Sunderland’s defending was deep and, at times, desperate and in the 76th minute came the inevitable, the moment the home team had spent the night inviting.

Le Bris team had sat back on their lead (George Wood/Getty Images)

Coventry, always moving Sunderland around, engineered space to cross from the right and Milan van Ewijk, who had gifted Eliezer Mayenda his late winner four nights earlier, centred for Ephron Mason-Clark to finish low into the corner.

Sunderland’s Class of 2024-25, though, has fortitude built in. They were sloppy and loose, too often hurried into hopeful long balls, but they clung on doggedly until Ballard’s big moment.

“It’s really important to highlight the character of this squad,” said Le Bris, whose only previous trip to Wembley was to watch an England international fixture.

“They are not always brilliant with the ball but they represent well the region, the club and the way you have to play to win. It’s more about mentality and character. When it’s tough they are so strong. They never gave up.”

Le Bris stressed that the season cannot be solely defined by what awaits on May 24, talking instead of the club’s wider journey. That has been an eight-year one beneath the Premier League to this point, with the second half of that building a confident young squad of assets, such as Jobe Bellingham, Chris Rigg, Dennis Cirkin and Mayenda under the watch of 27-year-old owner Kyril Louis-Dreyfus.

The plan has been astute and, next to the river where they used to build the boats, there is a rising tide. “It’s about shared energy and connections together,” said Le Bris. “The question now is if we can win the last game.”

The answer will come in 10 days.

(Top photo: Ballard’s winner sparked unprecedented scenes at the Stadium of Light. Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images))

This news was originally published on this post .

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