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Josh Windass scored the winning goal in the League One play-off final with the last action of extra time as Sheffield Wednesday beat 10-man Barnsley in the most dramatic circumstances.
With a third EFL play-off final in as many days seemingly destined for penalties, Windass headed beyond Harry Isted’s despairing dive to send the Owls up to the Championship at the expense of their South Yorkshire rivals.
It was cruel on the Tykes who had been a man down since the 49th minute when Adam Phillips was shown a straight red for a poor challenge on Lee Gregory.
In an action-packed period of extra time, Isted saved brilliantly from Michael Smith and Barry Bannan and Luca Connell missed a sitter for the Reds before Wednesday came up with the latest of late winners.
It was perhaps fitting for Wednesday to win promotion in such remarkable fashion given their run to this Wembley showdown.
Darren Moore’s men looked on course for automatic promotion with a club-record 23-game unbeaten run.
However, that ended when the Tykes beat them 4-2 in March and they eventually finished third behind Plymouth and Ipswich with 96 points – the highest number of points ever accumulated to not be enough to go up automatically.
They then fell to a thumping 4-0 defeat in the first leg of their play-off semi-final with Peterborough to leave their promotion hopes in tatters as fans booed the team from the pitch.
Backed by a raucous Hillsborough they stunned Posh to equalise the tie on aggregate with the final kick of the 90 minutes in the second leg before winning on penalties. It was the first time a team had ever overcome more than a 2-0 deficit in a play-off semi-final.
For long periods of Monday’s League One final it seemed like that would be as good as it got for the Owls. But in the last second of the game Windass dived to head Gregory’s cross in powerfully and send 44, 000 Wednesday fans into pandemonium while breaking Barnsley hearts.