It was a game of football with a result that reverberated across the globe.
When Yarm and Eaglescliffe FC found themselves 5-2 down in the 89th minute of their Northern League Division Two game against Sunderland West End, their chairman James Francis was silently rubbing his hands together in the knowledge that he didn’t have to hand over a crate of beer to a player of the match.
As the goals flew in and the deficit tumbled from three, to two, to one, the unthinkable was happening.
Yarm and Eaglescliffe were about to pull off what is probably the greatest comeback in the history of football – an achievement that has been compared to Middlesbrough’s famous win over Steaua Bucharest in the UEFA Cup, Manchester United’s 1999 win over Bayern Munich in the Champions League, and Liverpool’s unlikely victory in Istanbul over Milan.
This achievement, Teesside’s own Istanbul (Yarm-stanbul?), saw Y&E transform a 5-2 defeat into a 6-5 win. Four goals in seven minutes. Insanity. A modern day football miracle.
It meant that Yarm and Eaglescliffe FC, a club that has only played Northern League football for two years, was about to get phonecalls from the BBC, TalkSport, and even interview requests from as far afield as Germany and Australia.
It also meant that Chairman Francis had to get his crate of beer back out.
“At 89 minutes I was thinking ‘well at least I get to keep the case of Stella’ because I’m not giving it out today!” Francis told The Northern Echo.
“After the game we didn’t realise what we’d done, because we’d been so pants for 90 minutes it was such a shock. We never saw it coming.
“So nobody was getting excited, nobody was taking films thinking ‘this is a major event about to happen’, we were cheesed off at 90 minutes that we were 5-2 down and about to get beat for the first time in 17 games.”
It wasn’t just opponents Sunderland West End who were astounded by the absurdity of the situation – Y&E were simply stunned themselves.
“Sunderland kept trying to play football and we kept winning the ball back and scoring!” Francis said.
One fan summed it up perfectly in a video of the pile-on that followed the sixth goal for the Teessiders. “Oh my God. ******* get in!” A mixture of disbelief and madness.
To top it off, Tom Atkinson, the scorer of four of Y&E’s six, profited from perhaps the most audacious of football skills – a rabona pass from Ste Roberts (who scored the other two Y&E goals of the match) – to put the ball past the West End ‘keeper for the last and deciding goal of the game 97 minutes after it began.
The club’s website called it “pure unadulterated absolute footballing filth” and as players flooded the pitch in a bundle of disbelief and ecstasy, James Francis couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“Until you see it written down – that it’s in seven minutes and four goals were in extra time – you’re just gobsmacked. We won, but we didn’t realise what we did in such a short space of time.”
Perhaps the most incredible thing about this achievement is that the club are not strangers to a late win.
Last year in the club’s first season in the Northern League, they found themselves 3-0 down to Newcastle Blue Star with 20 minutes to play. You guessed it, Y&E won 4-3.
In October, Y&E took on local rivals Billingham Synthonia winning 1-0. The time of the goal? You guessed it, the 93rd minute.
“We’ve got a little history of doing it now,” Francis chuckled over the phone.
Knowing that an 18-game unbeaten record hung over their heads, the 6-5 win over Sunderland West End marked a milestone for Y&E who have only been in the Northern League for two seasons.
The club has ambitions to take over the playing fields at Egglescliffe school and develop a footballing site there and the exposure from the historic win has helped the club move towards that goal.
“We had some games and match balls that still needed sponsoring until the end of the season and we’ve had a good uptake with that,” Francis said.
Football is an emotional game and we'll leave the final words of this to Y&E committee member James Gilroy who chronicled the insanity in his match report: "Somehow we’ve won, we’ve managed to comeback from 5-2 going in to stoppage time to win 6-5. We are all stood there in disbelief.
"I’ve been lucky enough to see the Y&E pull off some last minute winners, when its just one goal, you can take it in. That sort of stuff does happen. But this? This isn’t supposed to happen. This doesn’t happen. Players, management, supporters were walking around in disbelief. This was Fantasy Football – pure Roy of the Rover Stuff. Its one of those moments to say – you were there. I was there, stood next to my son and may mates from the football. Class."
Y&E take on Billingham Synthonia on Wednesday and will look to extend their remarkable unbeaten run. For James Francis’ sake, it will hopefully be less stressful an affair.
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