‘Is There Time For A Winner?’ is the story of Sheffield Wednesday’s 2022/2023 promotion miracle. Superbly told by Alex Miller and Joe Crann, the book provides in-depth insight into a remarkable campaign, including the greatest ever play-off comeback and a 120+3 winner at Wembley. On the third anniversary of the final against Barnsley, here is an extract from the book, which can be bought HERE.

The ball beats the Barnsley goalkeeper to a sound that seems to reverberate that way only at the home of football. Sheridan, Waddle; to those in the stands, only Sheffield Wednesday legends of old have sparked its unmistakable timbre.

It’s a delicate crash of ball on net, a momentary flicker as it peels down the goal, a half-second of breathlessness and then pandemonium from the terraces, the individual sound of fathers hugging daughters, brothers embracing sisters and grandparents lifting their grandchildren to create the crash of a sea of 44,000 sunburnt revellers.

Wednesday’s players race off in directions unknown. Blood runs cold and adrenaline runs amok. At the midway point between the corner flag and the Owls’ technical area at Wembley Stadium, players meet substitutes in unruly rejoice. Barry Bannan looks to his public to punch the air, a bibbed Aden Flint raises his hands to his head and within microseconds they’re joined by backroom staff who, it was later joked, surely should have known better.

It felt to those present that the entire Sheffield Wednesday world was there, joined in unison at the breaking of a scoreline that many had given up on and that had looked destined for penalties. Wembley Stadium shook with pandemonium. Wembley was blue and white and Wednesday were going up.

At the centre of the stadium, though, and with the world in cacophony all around him, one Wednesday figure stood cold, motionless. Darren Moore stared across the pitch with perspiration glistening from his head and put his hand to his chin in a pose well-known to the thousands deep in guttural euphoria. He closed his eyes for just a moment, took a breath and motioned to his colleagues in quiet, heartbroken desperation. Because as all those around him had darted into mayhem, he’d soon spotted that the linesman’s flag had been raised, cruelly delayed by the presence of VAR ruling no League One figure was accustomed to.

Will Vaulks’ stunning 107th-minute goal had been ruled out, his gymnastic celebration executed for naught. Marvin Johnson was the first member of the pitchside melee to spot the flag and broke the news to his teammates. One by one, the Owls stared across the pitch, open-mouthed in disbelief.

Vaulks’ initial ball over the top had been delayed a moment as he struggled to drag it out of his feet on the dry, late-May pitch and Jack Hunt hadn’t quite managed to hold his run. Hunt, off the bench and darting towards a second moment of immortality in a fortnight, had been ruled offside. His well-placed ball back inside was scrubbed out of the history books. A heartbroken Vaulks had belted home the best Wembley goal never scored.The formality of a VAR check confirmed the truth and, with only 13 minutes of added time left on the clock, Wednesday would have to go again.

The sinking feeling permeated the London air like a puncture as Barnsley supporters stole that feeling of jubilation and sucked it into the West Side of the ground – the one with all the good pubs, we were told – realising Luca Connell’s misdirected effort moments earlier would not prove fatal. The sinking feeling set in. With time running out, the biggest South Yorkshire derby of all-time would remain 0-0. The 2023 League One play-off final was destined for penalties.

The match had been low on quality, headlocked in long-ball tactics and a desperate feeling of uncontrolled to-and-fro. Neither side had truly taken grip of the match, but although some would later laugh it off as a stinker, there were more than enough moments to fill a highlights package.

It had been gnarled, gritty, exhausting, but full of moments. Both keepers had made excellent saves; Cameron Dawson a man inspired, Harry Isted a man possessed. Barnsley had a very strong penalty shout rejected and later bemoaned a decision when a key midfielder was shown a red card on just 49 minutes. Both sides had hit the woodwork and down to 10 men, it was the Tykes that had stepped into the occasion as the Owls failed to expose their numerical advantage.

Barnsley had been better in the second half since the sending-off. Wednesday had the better of extra time.In the stands 44,000 Wednesdayites vastly outnumbered their red-clad counterparts, but in truth had quietened a touch as the game grew old, locked in fear by the possibility of another near-miss by a club that, historically-speaking, had made near-misses something of a forte.

The feeling was that, having failed to grow in stature after Adam Phillips’ red card, having had such a classy goal scrubbed off and having celebrated appropriately, it would have been ‘Very Wednesday’ to have to face a slow march down Wembley Way with sunken shoulders, dads explaining to the children they had lifted into the air so joyfully in the wake of Vaulks’ strike that this was what it means to be Sheffield Wednesday; bridesmaids with running mascara.

Never, ever the brides.It had been a hard road to this point. Relegated two seasons earlier in no small part due to a points deduction slapped on them while the club scrambled to recover from an outlay that contravened EFL rules on profitability and sustainability, Moore was the seventh manager to take to the Hillsborough hotseat since their last Wembley appearance – eight including a stand-in during a Covid pandemic that had beaten the life out of the club and left it broken.

That last Wembley appearance had taken place on May 28, 2016, when Carlos Carvalhal’s Owls came within 90 minutes of achieving a place in the Premier League, but lost 1-0 to Hull City. That result, the spending that facilitated it and a play-off semi-final defeat to Huddersfield Town the following season, left a hangover that seven years on had not been eased.

Broken was the word Moore chose several months previously when describing the club he had taken on, with players not having been paid on time, a transfer embargo preventing punches in the fight. No playing style, no heart. Rudderless. The drop to the third tier cut deeply but delivered cause that Wednesday could use it to take breath and recover. Moore had at one stage been gravely ill, fighting for his life while his players had been fighting for a survival of a very different kind. Long-serving players had moved on and a slate had been at least partially wiped clean.

The pain of a last-gasp play-off semi-final defeat 12 months prior to Wembley had left some calling for the manager’s head, and a summer turnaround of personnel in the changing room left uncertainty. Wednesday signed players unfashionable but with the cuts and bruises and hairy chests to stand up in the big moments.

Record-breaking runs followed, famous nights under the lights bombing the richest club in the world out of the FA Cup to scenes nobody at the time felt would be surpassed for years to come. Half a season unbeaten proved not to be enough as Plymouth Argyle and Ipswich Town bulldozed through the final stages of the campaign to capitalise on a Wednesday wobble. A club-record 96 points would have been enough to achieve automatic promotion in any English league in history, but Wednesday finished third. Bridesmaids. And then came Peterborough. Peterborough away. Peterborough at home. They had achieved play-off immortality already, dared to dream against Posh and somehow pulled off the seemingly-impossible.

But in the Wembley stands, energy sapped by the sun, Wednesdayites knew it would count for bugger all if they didn’t find a way past their South Yorkshire neighbours. Barnsley fail to clear the ball and it falls only to a Sheffield Wednesday midfielder granted a yard of space by a Tykes defence suddenly exhausted. “Dele-Bashiru,” the commentary rolls as the maligned youngster takes a touch and thunders the ball side-foot into the instep of his veteran teammate, Lee Gregory. A touch, a twist, a turn, some space. A twist, a turn, some more. Wembley frozen, almost silent but for a heartbeat, Gregory looks inside and, with the world agog, lines up a cross with his weaker left foot. “Is there time for a winner?”