We’ve all seen it about a million times and from hundreds of angles, but none of us are probably sick of it — even a year down the line.
When Dan Ballard headed the ball in off the crossbar and over the line in the 122nd minute on 13 May 2025, it sent the Sunderland-supporting world into absolute pandemonium. Coventry City players dropped to their knees, red smoke filled the air and Ballard stripped off his shirt and led the charge into the packed crowd at the Stadium of Light.
On a night that’ll go
down as one of the greatest in the stadium’s history, everything about what the club has become was in place. Making the ground a cauldron and coming back from 0-1 down on the night is the attitude we’ve adopted in the Premier League, but we wouldn’t have had the chance to burst back the way we have without that incredible night on Wearside.
Football is all about fine margins, and that — for a winning goal to send a team to Wembley — couldn’t have been much finer.
If that header had been an inch higher, it wouldn’t have bounced down and over the line; if Ballard had been a second slower to the ball, his header probably would’ve gone over the bar. Luckily for us, it didn’t, but it sums up the ecstasy and devastation this sport can bring us.
If the ball doesn’t cross the line at that moment, the game goes to penalties and a spot at Wembley is in the balance even more. We may have just finished another season of Championship football if that ball doesn’t brush the crossbar in that exact spot.
The night was one of tension. Coventry had so much of the ball without doing much with it and when they levelled the tie at 2-2, sides with a weaker mentality may have buckled.
However, under Régis Le Bris, we’re a strong side when it comes to pressure and the comeback win at Wembley ten days after that all-important night last May provided more evidence of that.
Ballard will get the headlines, but you also can’t look back on the goal without a nod of appreciation to Enzo Le Fée.
His delivery into the box was perfect, with the ball dipping at just the right moment and landing in what’s commonly known as the ‘corridor of uncertainty’, giving keeper Ben Wilson a dilemma that ended with him picking the ball out of the back of the net.
In one of the many, many rewatches of the goal, you’ll likely notice Leo Hjelde, who’d barely been on the pitch for a minute. He makes a run across the box and distracts two defenders, paving a path for Ballard to do the rest and win us the tie.
I was watching the second leg on TV at home and what I’ll always remember is the morning afterwards and my neighbour (who isn’t really into football), telling me he was about to check the score of the match but heard the screams and cheers of a maniac (me), that told him Sunderland had won. I was happy to oblige and help him out.
The last-gasp goal produced some of the greatest scenes the Stadium of Light has ever seen, and it was a fine night in the fine month that was May 2025.
This May could see us finish in the top half of the Premier League for only the second time in twenty five years, and it’s all thanks to plenty of movement in the box and then…BALLARD!
