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Carlisle Utd 0 Leeds Utd 2 (2-3 on aggregate)
League One Play-off semi-final 2nd leg

Carlisle United - Westwood, Raven, Livesey, Murphy, Horwood, Dobie, Lumsdon, Bridge-Wilkinson, G Smith, Hackney, Graham. Unused subs - Howarth, Arnison, Thirlwell, Taylor, Madine.

Leeds United - Ankergren, Richardson, Huntington, Douglas, Prutton, Beckford, Howson, Johnson, Michalik, Kilkenny, Freedman. Unused subs - Marques, Carole, Kandol, Hughes, Lucas.

Justice was served in a large measure last night when the team that got 91 points on the pitch during the season and missed the League One title by two points got to the Wembley play-off final. 

The 2-0 Leeds Utd victory over Carlisle United came courtesy of local Leeds lad Jonny Howson scoring in each half.

It was a stunning victory - an adjective often over-used in football but appropriate for this match. Howson scored with 90 minutes and 40 seconds on the clock just as the stadium announcer had said that there would be only one minute of added time. The referee played an extra minute after the goal and Carlisle managed to get the ball in the box but didn’t threaten the Leeds goal and then it was all over. Leeds fans and players celebrated and the Carlisle Utd players were understandably shocked, some in tears.

The fact that there was so little added time was due to the spirit in which the game was played. The game had no bookings - surely a record for a second leg play-off match - and no substitutions. I cannot remember the last time I saw that in a game.

Carlisle United and their fans must feel like they have had something taken from them but in truth the job was only half done after the first leg victory and the overall result was fair.

Carlisle had a better chance than Leeds of securing automatic promotion during the regular season and blew it at the death.

They dominated the 1st leg at Elland Road but didn’t play to the final whistle and how important Dougie Freedman’s goal was to be. Last night was the reverse of the first tie, with Leeds dominating the match for long periods with Carlisle limited to a handful of chances compared the hatful they made in the first leg. The Leeds midfield played the ball around last night, having been AWOL in the first leg. The Leeds fullbacks, Bradley Johnson and Frazer Richardson were more effective in defence in preventing the crosses that had made Carlisle so dangerous in the first leg and both were tireless in attack, Johnson hitting the post late on with a header and Richardson linking up with the attack and pumping in cross after cross. Jonathan Douglas deserves credit for his hard work in front of the defence too. Worthy of mention was Carlisle-born Paul Huntington who suffers dog’s abuse all night from the home fans but that would have been light relief compared to the threatening phone calls he received earlier in the year from the brain-dead sections of Carlisle’s support - no one savoured the Howson goal more than Paul.

In the end Carlisle Utd were undone by not playing to the final whistle again, when extra-time was surely in the mind of everyone on the pitch including the Leeds home-grow hero Jonny Howson.

The result still doesn’t mean Leeds United are promoted but a trip to Wembley is a fitting reward for the loyal and active support given by tens of thousands of Leeds fans up and down the country this season. It is justice.

Meanwhile spare a thought for Lord Mawhinney who will have spent a sleepless night trying to work out how he can avoid being present at the League One play-off final or what it will be like to spend the worst two hours of his life on national and international television being verbally abused by 50,000 Leeds fans. Let’s hope that as he pours the gin on his cornflakes this morning the wretched little man considers the “revolver in library solution” and does us all a favour.

There is certainly plenty of interest from the North in tonight’s play-off encounter between Carlisle United and Leeds United, but not much material to work with. The YEP, The York Evening Press, The Northern Echo and the Halifax Courier have all published, this morning, the same long quotes from Carlisle United’s manager John Ward.

It serves no purposes to reprint it all here when all he is really saying is it would be madness to try and defend at Elland Road for 90 minutes and that his players will go forward and look for a goal tonight.

It’s a sensible view and a laudable approach to an away leg of what is, essentially, a cup-tie and it promises a treat for the fans at Elland Road and those watching on Sky.

But there was one quote from the upbeat, bullish interview with John that caught my eye and made me do a little research. In the slightly longer, York Evening Press version of the interview Ward addresses the prospect of his players playing in front of a full Elland Road, with just 2,000 Cumbrians in a capacity crowd of over 38,000:

“We’ve very much got the picture of Elland Road, so everything will be reasonably familiar to us. It was practically full when we went there last month and scored two goals against them, so we know we’re capable of doing that.”

For the record and the enlightenment of John Ward and his Carlisle players, Elland Road was NOT “practically full” in April for the last visit of Carlisle United, in fact, it wasn’t even three-quarters full. With the Upper East Stand now open and full - the largest single cantilever stand in Europe when built ten years ago - Ward and his merry men face and extra 10,000 Leeds fans, compared to the fixture to which he refers. Put another way, he faces a greater number of “extra” Leeds United fans tonight than the whole crowd that attended the Carlisle United v Southend decider the week following the Leeds Utd v Carlisle Utd clash in April!

Of course, crowds and their level of support don’t win matches, otherwise Leeds United would still be in the Premier League and Europe, but it would be foolish to assume that because your players have played in front of 28,530 fans in a league game the atmosphere will not be quite different when 38000+ fans are screaming Leeds on in a semi-final. There will be no “prawn sandwich brigade” in the Leeds ranks tonight.

After playing FOR Leeds against Gillingham in front of 38,000 fans last week Andy Hughes said,

“It takes your breath away when it is like that. I was honoured to be on the pitch in front of those fans, but that is Leeds United football club. There’s no experience like that.”

Now imagine what it will feel like to be playing for Carlisle in front of a crowd five times the size of your average home gate! John Ward may want to have another quick word with his boys before they step out at Elland Road tonight.

Still I applaud his approach to the match and I’m looking forward to some goals tonight - mainly from Leeds - but the record shows that both sides are likely to score in both ties!

My only hope is that the referee appreciates this is a cup tie and keeps his cards in his pocket. Leeds United fans will remember that we got two red cards in our brilliant, 2-0 away victory at Deepdale in May 2006 and lost Crainey and Cresswell for the 2005-06 play-off debacle at Cardiff. Let’s hope Macca has a word with the likes of Beckford and Kandol to keep their mouths firmly shut tonight.

Leeds United 3 v 2 Carlisle United

Leeds United came back from 1-0 down in front of a crowd of 28530 at Elland Road to take all three points in a match against League One’s second-placed Carlisle United.

Carlisle United are in an automatic promotion place and just 11 points ahead of Leeds who face an arbitration hearing this week to see if they can have their 15 point deduction returned.