A man in a car and ‘every Wednesdayite’ Darren Moore hails something he’s never seen before on historic Sheffield Wednesday evening

Eyes were not full, his voice was calm. But standing beneath the floodlights in a stadium not long cleared of thousands of elated supporters, the Owls boss was full of pride, heart and – yes – a little bemusement at what had just happened.

Coming off a rock-bottom 4-0 drubbing at Peterborough United, they needed four and they got them at the death. They needed another and they got it. When penalties came every single player chosen to take one stepped up and did their duty.

In the stands? A herculean performance. Every figure connected to Sheffield Wednesday played their part – with Moore at the centre of it.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said the 49-year-old, a proud owner of a career of Premier League standing. “But we worked for it, we planned for it.

“We spoke about the percentages of balls we needed forward, we went a different way with that. When the teamsheet came in and we saw the same 11 [for Peterborough], we’d had a good look at them in the first leg and we knew their capabilities.

“We attacked their two full-backs and got a lot of joy from that, but we kept the pressure on.

“To score that goal at the end having kept going, that was the magical moment for me. Once we got to the penalties we’d prepared for them all week and it turned out well for us.”

Moore eulogised on the supporters, the staff at the training ground, middle-aged supporters who had stopped him in the street mid-week to pass on their best wishes.

The evening was not about proving doubters wrong he said, rather going out to do the business for a long-suffering fanbase that chose not to mope or sully, but to get behind a group that had to all looking on thrown away an unthrowable position of strength.

“I’ve been out in the community,” he said. “Everybody I saw, every Wednesdayite was phenomenal. This morning I went for a walk on my own and a gentleman in a car shouted at the top of his voice, ‘We can do this, Wednesday.’

“I thought, ‘Yeah, we can.’ Every step of the way we’ve had that encouragement. It’s been one big joint effort and there was huge belief.”

Next up? A trip to Wembley and the vision of half a stadium in blue. Sheffield Wednesday has seen that before, though not perhaps following the magnitude of what happened at Hillsborough on Thursday evening.

Moore continued: “You look back at the season and we’ve faced so much adversity with injuries and so forth. The boys have kept going. It’s been a record-breaking season with the points tally and now we’ve done something that outside the football club, people wouldn’t have believed.”

They believe it now. As the assembled thousands sang heartily into the Sheffield night, the famous Sheffield Wednesday are off to Wembley. Truly, truly remarkable.

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