GLAD ALL ROVER!
Ten-man Tranmere battle back into the EFL
ELATED boss Micky Mellon could scarcely contain his joy after Tranmere earned promotion back to the EFL after a three-year absence in dramatic fashion at Wembley yesterday.
Rovers had to do it the hard way in the National League promotion final after left-back Liam Ridehalgh was sent off in the very first minute after his rash two-footed challenge on Boreham Wood’s Ricky Shakes.
Andy Cook gave the Wirral outfit a boost when he powered home a header from James Norwood’s sixth minute cross, but Bruno Andrade coolly finished deep in first half stoppage time to level things up.
With ten minutes left, Norwood proved to be Tranmere’s hero as he rose high to head home the winner.
“I’ve had some special days in football and I’m blessed that I’ve had my fair share,” said an exhausted Mellon, who won two promotions with Fleetwood and another with Shrewsbury.
Blessed
“But with everything we had to contend with, going down to ten men after about a minute, to come out on the right end of the result after 90 or – I don’t know how long the ref added on – 145 minutes, we’re obviously delighted to get over the line.
“It means so much to everybody at the football club, you’d have to be involved in the club to see how desperately we needed this.
“People have lost their jobs, I don’t want to start crying, but it really did mean that much to us. To get the club back into the Football League is an unbelievably proud moment not just for me but the players, staff, the chairman. We really have fought hard.”
Match-winner Norwood was almost in a state of shock afterwards.
“It hasn’t quite sunk in yet,” he said. “I took a little bit of time out to sit on the field and watch the lads celebrate and just started crying.
“When I signed for the club it was all about promotion. When the other lads signed it was all about promotion. We thought we could do it last year, fell at the last hurdle and made it so difficult for ourselves.
“We said in the press on Friday that we would die for each other today in order to get promotion. I think a few lads were close to death! We put everything into that game and we knew one chance would come for us. It came, it went in and we’re in League Two.”