From Derby to Wembley 751 days later: Darren Moore and Sheffield Wednesday have done something magnificent

It was a grey, overcast day in Derbyshire and outside the walls of Pride Park, Derby supporters had started their party. Within a few minutes, they’d be joined by their players.

But back inside, the atmosphere was cold, somehow much colder than the temperatures would suggest. Moore – fresh out of ICU and on the touchline against medical advice – was thinner than when he’d last had a microphone shoved under his nose. The stands were barren. Players shed tears as they left the field for the final time in Owls clothing.

Sheffield Wednesday was a club relegated from the Championship by a points deduction and broken beyond recognition; a lonely husk of an institution.

“The hard work starts here,” Moore said. It was 751 days ago.

On Monday afternoon the sun shone. The football was, shall we say, not a spectacle. But it mattered not.

Drenched in sunshine, when Josh Windass’ diving header hit the back of the net 44,000 Wednesdayites jumped from their seats in unbridled pandemonium, filling the Wembley sky with joy usually reserved for dreadful American films.

It’s been a crazy ride.

The mad, bad summer of 2021, in which Wednesday were under an embargo that saw Moore miss out on transfer targets while rivals stocked-up. A thrown-together rag-tag of admittedly well-paid free transfers and loans were so cruelly tumbled out of last season’s play-offs at the death by Sunderland.

The opening stages of this campaign, when others set off apace and the first strained calls of guillotine fetched for Moore’s head.

The 23-match unbeaten run, the Newcastle win, the win at Fratton Park after which the notion of missing out on automatic promotion felt silly.

The Forest Green comedown. The mad, bad run that saw a top two placing loosen from grip. The trip to London Road in which the world fell apart.

Everything that has followed from that 4-0 defeat has been Roy of the Rovers parody. From Moore’s 7am bedtime to Windass’ header, a narrative of ridicule.

But the togetherness shown at Hillsborough for that remarkable second leg semi-final was something built many, many months ago. Years perhaps. Moore has done all he can to change the narrative around the football club; as Jurgen Klopp might put it – to turn us all from ‘doubters to believers.’

Constant ‘messages to the fanbase’ in press conferences, thinly-veiled suggestions to the media that we were a pack too preoccupied with looking back, a turnaround in mindset within a changing room that his predecessors had written off as cowardly.

The stats; that Sheffield Wednesday couldn’t win games from behind, that they couldn’t score goals, defend set pieces or win big games.

That Darren Moore was a ‘nearly man’, that he couldn’t get the big calls right, that he himself couldn’t win big games.

Chest filled, medal draped around his neck, Moore was a picture of pride and relief post-match. The gaunt, skinny image of 751 days ago a memory.

Wednesday are a Championship club once again.

“The hard work starts now.”