Oldham 3-2 Southend: Latics Mount Incredible Comeback to win National League play-offs and return to EFL after years of stagnation and pain

Oldham left Southend speechless with a pulsating comeback to expel their demons from the recent era and to restore their place in the Football League.

How do you bottle such an ecstasy? The Latics looked down and down after 110 minutes of this filthy, rasterie, explosive affair. Then James Norwood and Kian Harratt replace the history upside down. Wembley was deafening.

No fans have known better and stagnate better than Oldham’s. The Latics became the first former Premier League Kant to get into the non-league in 2022. This was their first play-off campaign since 2007 and only the fourth time that they had since finished in the upper half of a division.

In 2021, fans wore a fake box in protest against the then owner Abdallah Lemsagam, with the club threatened by the administration and struggled to pay salaries. Making gloomy does not straighten their pain.

Now they finally have redemption. Micky Mellon, their 19th manager in the past decade and the first to complete a full season at the time, has made a sacrifice that nobody could do for him. Joy.

Star -Spits Mike Fondop, 31, was not even born the last time Oldham won a promotion in 1991.

Oldham returned to the football competition with a remarkable 3-2 comeback victory in Southend

Southend Drew First Blood After Manny Monthe scored his own goal under pressure from Charley Kendall

Joe Garner Drew Oldham Level early in the second half with a composed penalty

The structure of this was marred by frustration in a first ticket assignment of only 40,000. After a lot of lobbying, that limitation was relaxed and we saw a record of the National League – 52,115 – with supporters traveling from Australia.

It was hardly a nice competition – there were lots of leftovers and long balls to talk about – but it was appropriate for two giants at this level that spent a combined successive 226 years in the EFL for their relegations. Seven years ago this was a competition of League One.

Fans knew that after two minutes they stood a roller coaster when Oldham’s Vimal Yoganathan danced past his husband and spelled a cross on the distant pole, but Mark Kitchen just couldn’t reach it.

Southend pulled the first blood after five minutes when Manny Monthe saw disastrousness. The defender, experienced on this stage, covered the ball in his own net under pressure from Charley Kendall. Cue pandemonium of the shrimp, which had brought more than 150 coach -loads and thousands more to the train.

Multiple chances went beg for the lives in the first half. Yoganathan fluffed a header from a point-white range in 18 minutes.

Fondop, who initially moved here from Cameroon to study, blew and blew but could not collapse. It is believed that fans have been paid to fly his father from his home country.

The sniper missed two chances with gilded edges in the first period and was denied a penalty despite a result challenge by Harry Taylor, who would otherwise be indisputable.

Oldham might start to feel that it was not their day when Fondtop baked the ball in inexplicably wide way after he raced one on one just before half -time. Fans broke out in cheers and thought it had gone inside, only for their faces to become pale. How did he miss?

Leon Parillon went to the lead at the start of extra time to send the fans wild

James Norwood attracted Oldham -level for the second time to keep people on the edge of their seats

Kian Harratt’s cross somehow ended up in the back of the net and Oldham won the game

But the men of Micky Mellon had a chance to get just after the break when Ben dragged Goodliffe in the box – and took it properly.

Joe Garner, once a championship man, stepped up and stroked home from 12 yards, sent Nick Hayes in the wrong direction and stormed to celebrate with the Euphoric Oldham Masses.

In the last phases, the game attritation remained. Corry Evans was booked for a poorly timed slide on Macauley Bonne. Oldham skipper Charlie Raglan, through a plague fort all day, continued to govern a strict defense.

Southend’s best scoring right back, Gus Scott-Morriss, hit half a volley from 25 meters with minutes to go, but it was straight in the throat of Mathew Hudson.

A minute in the stopping time, Oldham let an almighty moan while Kitching a low first effort flashed just wide of the post. But nobody could find a winner after 99 minutes of fighting.

And so in extra time it was, like the previous four non-league showpieces. Of course it had to go that way.

Then it was the time of Parillon to etch his name in Southend Folklore – or he thought. Hudson parried a cross of Scott-Morriss directly in his path and the replacement note in the most pressure head of his life. The nearly 30,000 disciples of Southend were erected.

But the day was not ready. Oldham had other ideas. First locked Norwood a long ball and off Hayes to end. Then Harratt waved a speculative cross in the distant pole and nobody touched it. Miraculously it went inside. Oldham has redemption.