Today’s finale to the Championship had a little bit of everything. In addition to the unbelievable endings in the Hull-Cardiff and Watford-Leeds matches, there was the relegation battle to avoid the drop to League One. With Bristol City already relegated and Wolves quickly going two-nil down, it was a race to avoid the final third relegation spot.
During the course of the 90 minutes between Huddersfield and Barnsley, there were points in the match where one team or the other were in the relegation zone if the scores stayed the same in all of the matches. But as it turned out, thanks to a last gasp goal by Crystal Palace against Peterborough, Huddersfield Town and Barnsley knew that if their match continued and ended in a draw then both teams would stay up.
Not surprisingly, the last few minutes of the match were essentially a game of ‘let’s not try to win or score in this match.’ In particular, almost the final 90 seconds of the match were spent by the Barnsley goalkeeper keeping the ball at his feet without one single Huddersfield footballer trying to get it away from him.
At the same time, supporters from both the home and away fans were chanting “We are staying up, we are staying up.”
It just goes to show that clubs are desperate to fight to stay in the division they’re in, and how relegation battles generate some bizarre endings to matches.
Watch the bizarre scenes in the video below, as well as the pitch invasion:
It reminds me of the match between West Germany and Austria from the 1982 World Cup where, if the scoreline had stayed the same, both teams would qualify for the next round. As a result, Austria didn’t try to take the ball away from West Germany, who passed the ball around to kill time much to the fury of Algeria, who were knocked out.
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LECCY
May 5, 2013 at 6:41 pm
Marriner couldn’t book the keeper the ball was still in play. There is no difference between this and teams taking the ball into the corner, passing the ball around defence or taking time over free kicks and goal kicks it is all time wasting to get the desired result. Neither team was going to risk conceding – that would have sent Barnsley down and if Posh has of equalised then Town down. Posh can’t complain over 90 seconds they have had 45 games and It was in their own hands- a result would have kept them up.
Al Terrier
May 5, 2013 at 12:37 pm
Nothing illegal or wrong for that matter. Any number of teams set up for a draw every week of the season. Just so happens this time, with 2 mins to go, a draw suited both. Happy days. Bye Bye Posh !!!
michael
May 5, 2013 at 4:29 am
In all fairness was a risky move by Barnsley because if Peterborough had gone and somehow got an equalizer at Palace then Barnsley would have been down. Huddersfield only needed a point to be safe so they were in no hurry to risk losing that point
Guy
May 4, 2013 at 9:09 pm
Weird, but why would either team want to risk anything at that point!
Btw, 90 minutes=seconds, third para. 😉
The Gaffer
May 4, 2013 at 9:14 pm
Thanks for catching the typo. Now fixed.
Cheers,
The Gaffer
Bishopville Red
May 4, 2013 at 8:34 pm
Somewhere, Neil Warnock is planning a lawsuit.
90 wasted seconds over 46 matches? I think we’ll live.
SB
Mufc77
May 4, 2013 at 7:55 pm
Nothing illegal other than the pitch invasion at the end.
Matt
May 4, 2013 at 7:17 pm
Nothing illegal but totally against fair play. They made it too obvious. I saw something like this 2-3 years ago in a Blackburn-Man United match on ESPN, when Man United and Blackburn were both content with a draw and Blackburn allowed Manchester United to pass the ball in their own half, but nothing like this