What Dan Neil and Régis Le Bris said in the Sunderland dressing room after THAT Coventry City goal revealed
Behind-the-scenes footage has captured Dan Neil and Régis Le Bris’s emotional message to the Sunderland dressing room in the aftermath of Dan Ballard’s last-gasp winner against Coventry City one month ago today.
Ballard’s 122nd-minute header in the second leg of the play-off semi final sent the Black Cats to Wembley, where they would repeat the trick by beating Sheffield United in the 95th minute thanks to Tommy Watson’s goal.
The aftermath of Ballard’s header was captured in Sunderland’s new ‘Til The End documentary, which follows the team throughout the play-off campaign. In the dressing room after the second leg, captain Neil and head coach Le Bris spoke of their pride in the team but both moved to underline the importance of being ready for the final challenge ahead.
“I said in the last game, everyone wrote us off and we stuck together as a team like we’ve done for the majority of this season. Even when they scored late on, we could easily have folded but it shows the character in this squad to keep going until the final whistle. We’ll celebrate tonight but there’s one more to go. One more to go. Celebrate tonight and then we’re back in, we focus and we go and do the job.”
Le Bris then told his players to be ready for the final, emphasising that they would have to reproduce their level of performance from extra time when they were able to reassert themselves following a challenging 90 minutes.
Le Bris said: “What do we want to achieve? Promotion. So the most important game now is Saturday. I’m proud of you because it was a tough game, they were good to be fair. They were very good. Probably the 91 minutes we were really nervous and we want to play a better football. Extra time was better, much better. But to win the final, we will need to play like we played at the end. We’ll have too many regrets if we play like we did for the first part of the game. Agree? So now it’s really important, I get that you want to rest and so on but what do we want to achieve really? We want to be promoted so we have to prepare really properly for the next phase. We’ll have ten days to prepare, it’s the most important day of your professional life. You will live something very crazy if you win this game, but we have to be well prepared. Be prepared for Wembley, OK? Enjoy.”
Dan Neil shares the Sunderland dressing room reaction to facing Coventry City in the play-offs
Elsewhere in the documentary, Neil said that while the players were mindful of their poor record against Coventry City and the 3-0 reverse at the CBS Arena earlier in the season, the tie proved a catalyst for the team to refocus and prove people wrong following a poor run of results at the end of the regular season.
Neil said: “Finishing the QPR game and seeing that we had Coventry… I think automatically you think about the record and maybe the previous result but everybody in the changing room was actually quite glad that we got Coventry… because it was almost a chance to get our own back for the result at their place. So there was a real steely focus in the changing room. It was almost the perfect catalyst.”
