BANTAMS NOSTALGIA: When Millwall fans ruined Wembley final

THE fans spilled on the pitch to cavort in celebration but some chose instead to goad the opposition.

That ugly element amid the scenes of exuberance and joy at the final whistle have marred this week’s play-off drama.

A small minority of idiots spoiling the overall mood with their own agenda.

It stirred memories of five years ago when City were on the receiving end of Wembley defeat and similarly moronic behaviour from the mindless few.

So much has happened to the club since hearts were broken by Steve Morison’s questionable late Millwall winner.

Stuart McCall has been and gone again, relegation, manager after manager, a worldwide pandemic … not much to cheer since that afternoon in May 2017 when we could almost taste the Championship.

VAR will be in operation for all three play-off finals this time, starting with the League One showdown between Sunderland and Wycombe. If only.

Watch the video again, freeze frame the image as the cross comes in, Lee Gregory flicks on and Morison appears behind Nathaniel Knight-Percival. Level? We will never know.

But it was the scenes that followed which left the most bitter memory as a sizeable number of Millwall supporters raced on from the stands.

Billy Clarke is taunted by a Millwall fan on the pitch after the final whistle

Wembley has always been sacrosanct when it comes to pitch invasions. It was an unwritten rule never to cross the threshold of England’s home of football.

Those individuals that day, though, could not care less about tradition, etiquette, or stadium rules.

They were going to have their own fun and stuff what anyone else thought about it.

Seeing fans on the pitch in a final was bad enough; but the way some made a beeline for McCall and the City players to get right in their faces and taunt them was far worse.

“I was close to clocking a couple,” fumed McCall afterwards. “I still don’t understand fans wanting to come on and goad myself and the staff.

“Just enjoy the moment. Stay in your own half, celebrate with your team. I feel bad enough as it is.”

Fortunately, unlike with Billy Sharp at the City Ground and others in disgraceful scenes in recent days, nobody suffered physically. But that wasn't the point.

Millwall hero Morison was just as angry that the mindless fringe had ruined his special moment.

He raged: “It should be our faces in the papers tomorrow, not those few who let us all down. I’ve never felt so high and then so low after the game.”

City skipper Romain Vincelot appeals in vain for offside after Millwall's goal

The contest itself had balanced on a tight rope throughout. City had more of the ball, with 60 per cent possession, but chances were at a premium.

City’s best moment came after 13 minutes when Mark Marshall’s well-weighted pass turned defence into attack and sent Billy Clarke scurrying clear. But Millwall keeper Jordan Archer kept the shot out with a fine one-handed save.

“It was a big claw of a hand and even then, it still went inches wide,” said McCall. “One piece of brilliance kept them in it.”

Rory McArdle threatened with a close-range header in the second half while Jed Wallace slid an angled shot past the far post at the other end.

Colin Doyle had still barely been troubled in City’s goal as the tie appeared headed to an inevitable extra 30 minutes.

Then Millwall got their break. Shaun Williams cut back inside Timothee Dieng on the left wing and found room to cross.

Gregory dived to divert it on across the box and there was Morison, suspiciously ahead of Knight-Percival in City’s eyes, to react quickest and flash a close-range volley beyond Doyle.

Had the striker gone a fraction early? Should the flag have been raised? Such are football’s fine margins, as McCall would often talk about.

Tony McMahon drilled a late effort into the side-netting – as an entire claret and amber end roared at him to cross – and City’s dreams of a return to the second tier for the first time since 2004 had melted away.

When the stewards had eventually done their job to remove the unwanted interlopers and Millwall had milked their moment, cold reality set in.

Stefan Rupp, making a rare post-match appearance in front of the media, talked of the defeat only “postponing” the club’s progress.

In truth, the season just gone – when City would inch one place higher in the bottom half of League Two compared with 2021 - would represent the first time since then that they have made any progress on the previous one.

CITY: Doyle, McMahon, McArdle, Knight-Percival, Meredith, Marshall, Vincelot, Cullen, Law (Dieng 74), Clarke (Jones 74), Wyke.

MILLWALL: Archer, Romeo, Webster, Hutchinson, Craig, Williams, Abdou, Wallace (Onyedinma 89), Gregory, Morison (Butcher 89), O’Brien (Ferguson 70).

REFEREE: Simon Hooper

ATTENDANCE: 53,320