Sometimes you just have to
wonder who writes the script in football.
Richie Barker was a boyhood Sheffield Wednesday fan and on their books as a
youngster.
However, the Sheffield-born
striker’s only first-team appearance was restricted to the Intertoto Cup –
ironically played at Millmoor – and Barker left the club he supported without
playing a domestic game for them.
And when he returned to
Hillsborough with Rotherham , who were making
their first trip to S6 in two decades and enjoying life in the second tier, in
2002, the footballing gods were licking their lips.
Barker wrote himself into
club folklore by climbing off the bench to score a last-minute winner in
front of the Kop where members of his family were sitting and give the Millers a
famous win against their local rivals.
It was pure Roy
The victory was pretty sweet
for everyone else with a Rotherham persuasion
too.
The Millers had been in the
doldrums and lived in Wednesday’s shadow for the last 20 years as they had
flitted between the bottom two divisions while the Owls were an established
Premier League side.
But the momentum was
shifting and Rotherham arrived at Hillsborough
above Wednesday in the table, although on goal difference alone.
It looked as if there would
be nothing to separate them on the pitch either as Alan Lee’s header early in
the second half was cancelled out by Shefki Kuqi’s leveller for the Owls.
So heading into injury time,
the Millers earned a free-kick. Nick Daws clipped it in, super-sub Barker rose
highest at the far post and time stood still as his header looped into the far
corner, with Kevin Pressman frantically scrambling to make a save.
He couldn’t and the ball
dropped into the net sending a packed Leppings
Lane Rotherham
supporters into ecstasy and Barker wasn’t far behind.
“I
grew up as a Wednesday fan, which I think initially the Rotherham
fans didn’t particularly take to,” Barker said in 2013 book Impossible Dream:The Ronnie Moore Years.
“I signed there at 14,
did my apprenticeship and had three and a half years as a pro. I left in 1996
and I think it was one of the first times I’d been back there as a player and
the first time I’d played at Hillsborough in a competitive game.
“I
think I got fouled and Dawsy put it in to the back post. Kuqi was marking me
and I just got above him and all I tried to do was head it back across the
goal, hoping someone might be able to get another touch.
“There were two or three players running in on Kevin
Pressman and they might have put him off. He got a hand to it but it trickled
in at the far post. It took so long to go in, it was probably only seconds, but
seemed like minutes.
“I didn’t know what to do because I had a lot of friends
on the Kop and I used to sit there myself. I didn’t want to offend anyone so I
wanted to celebrate it but without alienating myself.
“It was great that it was in front of the Kop but it
would have been even better if it was in front of the Rotherham
fans.
“Just getting on the pitch was a boost for me to be
honest. So to score and win the game in the manner I did is something I never
envisaged happening to me.
“It meant a little bit more because three generations
of my family are all Wednesday fans and it was somewhere I had been going since
I was four so it meant a little bit more than going back to other clubs.
“For Rotherham to go there and take 7,000
people and to beat Sheffield Wednesday was
magnificent and we enjoyed it properly.
“When we first got into that division we got
together as a group and recognised some of the grounds we’d be playing at and
said to enjoy it because we might not get another chance.
“But we were going to places like Sheffield Wednesday and winning.
“From the fans’ point of view they had lived
in the shadow of the two Sheffield clubs for
so long, it was their time to go to work on a Monday morning and have their
moment of joy.
“They’d had their fair share of getting beaten
by the likes of Chester
There'd be plenty more of joy to come for the Millers at Hillsborough as well.
