Sunderland have been practising penalties ahead of this weekend's League One play-off final in a bid to avoid a repeat of their 1998 Wembley heartbreak. The Black Cats head to London this weekend to take on Wycombe Wanderers in the showpiece game, with a place in the Championship at stake.
If the game goes into extra-time, and the scores are level at the end of the addition 30 minutes, promotion will go down to a penalty shoot-out. Sunderland fans still carry the scars of their defeat against Charlton Athletic in the second tier play-off final 24 years ago at the old Wembley Stadium, when Peter Reid's side led three times over the 120 minutes only to end up drawing 4-4, and then when the shootout went to sudden death Mickey Gray experienced the agony of seeing his penalty saved as the Addicks triumphed 7-6 to seal promotion to the Premier League.
Neil does not want Sunderland's fate to be decided on penalties this time round but says his players have been practising just in case, although he says it is a lesson from his time in charge of Hamilton Academical in Scotland that is behind that decision rather than the Black Cats' own past experiences. "We've been doing penalties after training every day for over a week now - just in case," he said.
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"I was at Hamilton, and we ended up practising penalties fairly regularly by default really, because the training was so competitive, it felt as though every day we'd finish on a draw and so we'd finish with penalties. That season, we won two penalty shoot-outs and ended up getting promoted, so in the long run it benefited us, even though admittedly it wasn't really by design.
"That seemed to be the difference to get us over the line though, so we've definitely been working on it here, in this week in particular. I know you can’t replicate Wembley, and you can't replicate the pressure, but what you can replicate is technique.
"You can replicate being comfortable standing in front of a goalkeeper, picking your side, and all that sort of stuff. So, yeah, we’ve been doing a bit of work on that."
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