On this day in 1999, only three days after Superkev's quadruple/foursome/hattrick-plus-one/double brace had secured promotion and the world's best conga at Bury, we travelled to South Yorkshire and beat Barnsley to take the Championship title with three games to spare.
For reasons lost in the mists of time, we followed that Tuesday game at Bury with a Friday night at Oakwell. Actually, it was because Sky had spotted a potentially crucial game - for us, the chance to go up, for the Tykes, the chance to cement mid-table obscurity. We already had 98 points, but we took the usual huge travelling support to make it a 17,390 a full house. We might have already secured promotion to the Prem, but we wanted the title, and we wanted to win every game - memories of Barnsley's mad 3-2 win at the SoL in November, when they scored two of the three penalties awarded, were still fresh. So that's revenge as well, against the only side to defeat us in the league at our place.
We lined up:
Sorensen
Makin Butler Melville Gray
Summerbee Ball Clarke Johnston
Quinn Phillips
...and Holloway, Craddock, and Dichio on the bench.
You know what you got with us that season - Bally would either win it or scare the opposition into giving it to him, give it to Lee Clarke, and Clarke in turn would find Summerbee or Magic Johnston out wide.
Barnsley was, by contrast to that joyously sunny night at Bury, wet and snowy, cold and dark. The football wasn’t though, and the shirts were off when Summerbee put us one up. If you’ve never seen Sunderland fans when we’re winning away from home, winning the league, this was the night to see them, bare-chested in the snow with the steam rising from them. Usually, it was Summerbee who'd ping in the cross and Johnston the more likely to cut in and shoot, but this time it was Nicky who swept in the opener right on half time at the far end. Clark got the second on 63, then Barnsley had the temerity to pull one back.
Without the use of any substitutions, we controlled the game until the end, when Phillips did what Phillips does. He won the ball out on the left wing, cut inside, and curled a beaut into the far side of the net right in front of us. The words icing and cake sprang to mind as we took it all in - if you're going to clinch a title of any sort in football, that's the way to do it. Champion-ees champion-ees, ole, ole ole. A Perfect Moment was at number one, and it couldn’t have been more appropriate.
We saluted, cheered, and screamed at the players to thank them for a job well done, as they'd confirmed what Quinny had said on the bus after the Charlton play-off defeat eleven months earlier - "we'll p155 this league next time."
Which we did. Three more games, a draw at Sheffield Utd and a win at Stockport setting us up nicely for a celebratory last-day win over Birmingham.
OTD: MCMENEMY GONE
OTD: MCMENEMY GONE
OTD: MCMENEMY GONE
OTD: MCMENEMY GONE
OTD: BARNSLEY '99
OTD: BARNSLEY '99