Missing masks, Sheffield Wednesday joy and fan thanks: Lee Gregory one year on from Wembley

*contains a bit of bad language*

It’s a goal that’s been watched hundreds of thousands of times over the last 12 months, ‘Greggers’ looking over his right shoulder as Windass goes flying through the air and lands on the Wembley turf, the net behind Harry Isted rippling. In the stands behind the goal, pandemonium.

One year ago today the Owls secured promotion to the Championship in the 123rd minute against their South Yorkshire rivals under the arch, and as many piled on top of the goalscorer, their number nine sank to his knees. What was going through his mind?

“Honestly?” he told The Star from a sunny hotel balcony by the Mediterranean Sea. “‘Thank f*** for that’ - that was what I was thinking. It’s emotionally draining, emotionally and physically draining, the whole day. Everything is around that one game, and you just feel knackered from start to finish. Obviously it went to extra time and I remember looking up with like 25 minutes of it gone and thinking, ‘Oh God, I’m going to have to take a penalty in this’.

“The Gaffer asked me if I was alright, and I said I was fine because I never want to come off, but I knew it meant I’d have to take a penalty… So when we scored I was just relieved that I wouldn’t have to do that now.

“I didn’t even know that the time was when we scored, I knew it was late but I didn’t know it’d be like the last touch. I remember ‘Sivvy’ (Jamie Smith) coming over and telling me to take as long as I could.”

It wasn’t long before he was joined by Aden Flint – who is now his teammate once again at Mansfield Town – as the big centre back who’d accidentally fractured his cheekbone a couple of weeks before smothered him with a bear hug, and the Wednesday striker says that he made a conscious decision to try and drink it all in.

“Somebody once told me - I think it might have been Steve Morison when he scored at Wembley - that if I was to score or something in that sort of occasion to make sure I took time to take it all in. Because you never really do,” he explained.

“There’s a lot of commotion and everything is going 100 miles an hour, but I remember walking back with Jack Hunt and just saying, ‘Lets enjoy this’. I turned around and looked at the fans, and I’m really glad I did that. I took it all in, and the atmosphere was unbelievable. It’ll stay with me forever.”

Of course to get to that game in the big smoke they’d had to pull off the great play-off comeback of all time. We all know the score against Peterborough United, we all know what happened that night at Hillsborough, and for Gregory and his teammates there was a sense of making sure that it wasn’t for nothing.

“It felt like, ‘We’re not going through what we’ve just been through, to lose this game’. Obviously we knew we had a tough game, but we just felt like we couldn’t make history in the semifinals and then go to Wembley and lose. That was our mood…

“But it’s always nervy in finals, it’s been the same in almost every final I’ve played - unless somebody scores early. A goal settles both teams down, because it changes the perspective of it all, but with ours the longer it went on without a goal the more nervy it got.”

Join our Whatsapp channel for your Wednesday news without the fuss of social media

Gregory was out there, you’ll recall, masked up after that training collision with his teammate prior to the first leg of the semifinals, and he nearly needed another visit to the specialist after his custom-made face covering went missing in the aftermath of The Miracle. There was concern over his availability because of it, but he was never going to miss that chance to tread that hallowed turf…

“I scored the own goal, so I was fuming, and I got brought off - I think I just chucked it on the bench somewhere,” he remembers. “Then obviously everything went off, and we were celebrating, so I totally forgot about it… It was only after we’d been in the dressing room that we were like ‘Oh s***, we’re in the final next week - where’s my mask?’

“The physios went and looked, and then we asked the media team to put it out and ask for it. Obviously we said that I might not get one in time for the final, but there was already a plan to get it done - it was more about me missing a few days’ training sessions if I didn’t have it… Thankfully it didn’t come to that!”

Gregory won’t be scoring goals in the blue and white next season, his Owls exit confirmed that, but he leaves having helped create memories that will last a lifetime for Wednesdayites – and he admits that he’s been a bit blown away by the response to the farewell message that he released earlier in the month.

“It’s been class,” he said. “I knew that some of the fans liked me, but the responses have been unbelievable - I genuinely can’t thank them enough. I’m not really on Twitter, but I logged on to post my goodbye because I wanted it to be from me rather than asking the media team to put something out.

“My wife and family and friends have been showing me what fans have been saying, so I have seen it all, and it’s class. It has made me feel again about how gutted I am to be leaving, but that’s football innit? But yeah, it’s all been really class.

“I will be back, because my little boy keeps asking me when we’re going to the games again. He wants to be back at Hillsborough when the season starts….

"There’s one game in particular that I’d really like to come to, and I think you can probably guess which one it is,” he said with a chuckle. We’re pretty sure someone can sort him out with a ticket for that one.