Championship: Colchester 0-1 Stoke
Stoke City are having their seasonal awards dinner this evening and, although the night is sure to go with a bang, the players' efforts on Saturday took them to within five minutes of having a much bigger reason to throw a party.
Tony Pulis's players stuck to their part of the bargain at Layer Road to produce a ninth away win of the season and top the table after becoming the last team to use the visitors' dressing room in 101 years of football at the ground, but Hull's late winner against Crystal Palace forced the season into the final game. Although Phil Brown's side trail by three points, they have a superior goal difference. Thus Stoke still need a point at home to Leicester on Sunday, who need all three and even that may not be enough.
"When the final whistle went there was quiet applause from our fans so we knew something had gone wrong," said Rory Delap, the Stoke midfielder whose long throw set up the scramble that led to Richard Cresswell's close-range winner.
Eight minutes earlier news had spread of a Palace equaliser on Humberside and the thousand or so Stoke fans in the 6,300 sell-out crowd could begin to contemplate top-flight football for the first time since 1985. "Now we have to go and get a result against Leicester," Delap added.
"It will be hard to play for a point because they need them too but not many people outside of this club gave us a chance of winning promotion. It's all about getting consistency in the Championship. We have had a few bad patches but we've been a lot more consistent than the other teams."
Fit and powerful, they did not have to be at their best on Saturday, when a first-half curler from Dean Hammond, a cameo from the soon-to-retire Teddy Sheringham, 41, and a disallowed header from Clive Platt in an injury-time flurry were all Colchester could muster as they searched for a goal and perhaps a point to remember as they prepare to move to a new 10,000-seat stadium at Cuckoo Farm.
"It's difficult enough coming here anyway and I wouldn't have minded playing anywhere else today because being the last game made it an even bigger one for Colchester," said Pulis. "Considering all the hullabaloo, bands, fireworks and old soldiers being rolled out to celebrate, it was important our lads kept their concentration and they were brilliant. It's still in our own hands and that's the best thing to come out of today. Ipswich have to win against Hull [on Sunday] to get into the play-offs and Hull have to win there to beat us [into the automatic places]."
Simultaneously Colchester will get an early sight of what they are up against next season when they travel to the only other club sure to be joining them in League One, Scunthorpe United, after a week training on the pitch at Layer Road, left intact by the home fans and which the manager Geraint Williams is grateful for as it will allow his players time for their own quiet moments of reflection.
"We wanted to say goodbye to the old ground and all we could do is put in a performance which gives some people happy memories," he said. "We dealt with all but one of their long throws into the box, allowing it to bounce six yards out, and that has won the game for Stoke."
It is becoming increasingly difficult to talk about Pulis's side without their methods being criticised but they try to play when they can and to fashion a team capable of winning promotion after two seasons as manager and, unlike the blunt instruments of Watford, without a sniff of a parachute payment, is praiseworthy indeed. Whichever division Stoke find themselves in next season, however, the task will be to evolve without losing their competitive edge.
"They are definitely one of the harder sides to play against in this league; they deserve to be where they are and good luck to them," said the Colchester midfielder Johnnie Jackson, who began as a trainee at Spurs. "They would come up against better sides in the Premiership and it would be tough for them but you have to win in the best way that works for the players you've got.
"They are a good side who knock on the door with their throw-ins and set pieces and they are top of the league, so they are obviously doing something right. There's no set way to play football, like you must do this, or you have to play the West Brom way. You play to win and they have perfected that and won a lot of games, so I don't think it's fair to criticise them."
Man of the match Rory Delap (Stoke City)