Darren Moore is beginning to realise that night will never leave him. Whether it is a chance encounter on the tube, or when an epic sporting comeback is in the air, or simply play-off season.
Just as he summoned the spirit of Liverpool against AC Milan in Istanbul in 2005 or against Barcelona at Anfield in 2019, others now cite the miracle recovery inspired by Moore, leading Sheffield Wednesday to promotion despite being 4-0 down after the first leg of the League One play-offs in 2023.
‘It’s changed the whole landscape,’ says 52-year-old Moore. ‘Don Goodman is a great friend of mine and told me after we won at Wembley that he couldn’t believe what he’d witnessed.
‘Commentating on Sky, he’d used the word “insurmountable” after the first game and said it would haunt him for the rest of his life. I said: “You would use that word, Don. Why would you not?”
‘There was no record of a game won in the history of the play-offs from three goals down, let alone four, but it doesn’t matter what the scoreline is now, no commentator will say it’s over ever again.’
On the same night, West Ham had reached the Conference League final and Newcastle smashed four past Brighton to edge closer to Champions League qualification. But the nation was talking about Wednesday. Even Pep Guardiola came into his Manchester City press conference the next day gushing about it.
Sheffield Wednesday’s players celebrate their incredible play-off semi-final victory over Peterborough in 2023. The Owls were 4-0 down from the first leg but turned it around
Manager Darren Moore urges his players on during the historic comeback
Liam Palmer celebrates scoring Wednesday’s fourth goal at Hillsborough, which sent the tie to extra time
‘Wow, to think Pep Guardiola was watching and talking about that game and our club Sheffield Wednesday and saying that was why he loved the English pyramid,’ Moore tells Daily Mail Sport.
‘So many people still talk about it and when the play-offs come round again it takes me through the whole thing, the emotion at Hillsborough to get an unachievable result, the work we all put in, the details, I can remember it all like it was yesterday.
‘It’s a time to be celebrated and remember. I’ll talk about it for years to come because it’s a special moment and anyone connected with the club will all take something from it. If you’re a Wednesdayite you will remember where you were that night.’
Moore’s starting point for the great Wednesday comeback was to convince his players the tie was not over after the first leg, played on a Friday night at Peterborough’s London Road.
His first move was to scrap the plan to take Saturday off, instead ordering his players to report to the training ground at 10 the next morning. Then, he drove home to Sheffield, arriving at 1.30am, made some black coffee and pored over the recording of the game until 7am before grabbing two hours’ sleep.
‘My job was to make it clear it wasn’t over,’ says Moore. ‘The media wanted to throw the book at me, which is fine. I get that, but I didn’t want the players reading that all weekend.
‘I wanted to be first into their heads. They thought they were coming in to see the video nasty from the night before but I’d got the analysis guys to line up all 65 goals they’d scored at Hillsborough that season.
‘We’d finished with 96 points and any other year it would’ve been enough for automatic promotion. We had scored five at home against Cambridge, Forest Green and MK Dons. We needed four, but we scored goals. We had been up in those echelons before. I didn’t want one result to derail everything we’d been working towards.’
Sheffield Wednesday’s Michael Smith celebrates with supporters after the match
Smith scores the night’s opening goal from the penalty spot in the ninth minute to give Wednesday hope
Having reminded them there were goals in the team, Moore presented the plan. ‘We go into the front (players) quicker and better,’ he said. ‘We’ll go man to man at the back. Each half we’ve got to aim for 25 crosses into the box. We’re going to pile it on them. We need a goal in each quarter.
‘They all looked at me and one of the players, Lee Gregory, stood up at the back and said: “Gaffer, this isn’t a miracle, we can do this.” I knew I had their minds now, whatever they went and read on the internet.’
After training, Moore had players taking penalties. ‘There were the weirdest looks,’ he says. ‘Maybe they still didn’t have total inner belief, but what they didn’t realise was they were all scoring goals.
‘I was saying things on a personal level to fire them up to create a bit of anger in the penalty kicks. The next day, we practised penalties and I got the academy staff out around the pitch with the Under 18s and 21s watching, so there was a point to prove as senior players.’
On the eve of the second leg, Moore trained at Hillsborough with hostile crowd noise piped through the speakers. Again, he had them taking penalties. After every session of the week, he showed his players an unlikely sporting victory or a comeback. They watched Buster Douglas beat Mike Tyson, they watched miracles from cricket and tennis.
‘Drip feeding it, every day,’ recalls Moore, who persuaded Daniel Sturridge to send a personal video message about Liverpool’s fightback against Barcelona in the Champions League semi-final. ‘People thought they just turned up and ran around but a real body of work went into it, working on mindset and we established a genuine belief in the players.’
To extend this feeling to the fans, Moore recorded a short video which was played on the Hillsborough screens for the crowd of almost 32,000, before the players emerged for the second leg.
‘We scored the first after nine minutes and the second after 25 minutes and, well, that was it, you could feel the energy,’ says Moore. ‘Peterborough were sitting back, clearing it off the line and hanging on. I’ve never heard anything like the noise.
‘At half-time, I’m walking up the tunnel thinking, “I’ve got to keep them calm”. The lads are coming into the dressing room saying, “We’ve got them here”. With the emotion of it they wanted to get straight back on the pitch. I’m saying, “Sit down, gets your drinks on board”.’
The equalising goal from Palmer (left) came in the 98th minute of the match
Wednesday fans go wild as Palmer is buried under his team-mates after the goal
Peterborough stabilised at half-time. Wednesday’s third did not come until the 71st minute and the equaliser by Liam Palmer came in stoppage time. It is now one of the most famous goals in the club’s history.
When David Storch and his Arise Capital consortium completed their takeover of the club this month and wanted to rev up the crowd before the game against West Bromwich Albion on the last day of the season, all they had to do was present a highlights package culminating in the spine-tingling Palmer goal.
‘We were back in the game,’ says Moore. ‘But we still needed to win it.’ And they went behind, 5-4 on aggregate with 15 minutes of extra time remaining. ‘When Peterborough scored, the lads looked at the clock and got around each other and said “Don’t worry, there’s time” and to this day it’s the proudest part of it all.’
Callum Paterson made it 5-5 and Wednesday won on penalties. After all, they had been practising them all week. There was still a final at Wembley against Barnsley, fierce South Yorkshire rivals and a team who had beaten them twice in the season.
‘My Christian faith helped me through,’ says Moore. ‘To keep my faith when people were losing theirs and to keep my feet on the floor. This was for me the culmination of two years. In the previous year we’d missed the play-off finals with the last kick against Sunderland. Patrick Roberts scored late in the second leg at Hillsborough, and we lost 2-1 on aggregate.
‘I was devastated. I only had five days off. I came home and five days later I said, “I’ve got to go back”. I went back and worked through the summer on recruitment and preparation. Then we reached the final and Barnsley turned it on, even when they went to 10 men. I thought we might be out of gas. After the season we’d had, Wembley can sap your energy. The pressure is immense.’
But Josh Windass won it for Wednesday, his diving header the only goal of the final in the 118th minute to clinch promotion to the Championship.
‘I’d never ever felt emotions like it,’ says Moore but three weeks later and he was gone, forced out of the club by owner Dejphon Chansiri and replaced by Xisco, who was sacked after failing to win any of the first 10 games in the Championship.
‘I didn’t want to leave,’ says Moore. ‘It’s only now people can see what happened. He wanted me out of the club and he got me out. I wanted to build in the Championship and go forward. I was gutted when he didn’t allow me that and showed me the door. A lot of people don’t realise that and I had to stand back and listen to him say things about me that were quite hurtful. But in the end, what’s come through is that now everyone can see where the club was at.’
The euphoric mood of the play-off miracle went with Moore. And, three years on, Wednesday are back down in the third tier, albeit with fresh post-Chansiri positivity after a season spent in administration and the Storch takeover, this month.
Moore led Wednesday to victory over Barnsley in the play-off final and secured promotion to the Championship
Sheffield Wednesday manager Darren Moore and his team celebrate their promotion to the Championship at Sheffield Town Hall following an open-top bus parade
‘The new American owners will see the passion,’ says Moore. ‘Wednesday for me is the biggest club outside the Premier League. I used to meet up regularly for a cup of tea with my old West Brom boss Gary Megson (a former Owls player and manager) and he’d say if you get this going, it’ll be like a runaway train.
‘And he was right. We sold 46,000 tickets for Wembley and we asked for 4,000 more. They’ve seen a snippet of that since the takeover. I know the club will heal itself because of the fans and they can bounce back next season, but the problem is that it’s going to be expensive.
‘You’ve got to be careful because of everything that needs doing in terms of stadium improvements. I’m talking about central heating and hot water. The basic structural needs of the football club require investment.
‘That’s what they say they’re doing. Get the infrastructure right and that place will soar. It can get back to the Premier League inside five years if it’s managed correctly. I can see a really bright future for Wednesday.’
