That’s just cruel on a 15-year-old!

Rigg denied late glory for Sunderland

FOR all the talk of the magic of the Cup, this tie very nearly had the most magical of endings when 15year-old Chris Rigg put the ball in the back of the net in the 90th minute in front of just shy of 6,000 Sunderland fans housed in the Putney End at Craven Cottage.

If the goal stood, Rigg would have become the youngest goalscorer in FA Cup history. As it was, it was disallowed with Abdoullah Ba offside in the build-up and Fulham and Sunderland will have to do it all again after a crazy game that had 39 goal attempts yet somehow ended one apiece.

‘Riggy goes to school and gets two days of day release a week where he trains with our first team. The rest of the time, he’s at school,’ said Sunderland boss Tony Mowbray.

‘When he came on at Shrewsbury, we were 1-0 down and we won the game 2-1 in his 10-minute spell. I felt he maybe had that bit of magic to come on and change the game so we wouldn’t have needed a replay.

‘The age is irrelevant for me. He brings energy as he showed and what a story that would have been — a 15-year-old boy coming on and scoring the winner.’

This was a proper cup tie. Jack Clarke’s early goal gave the visitors the lead before a moment of brilliance from Fulham captain Tom Cairney levelled the game on the hour mark. Either side of Cairney’s equaliser was a thrilling endto-end contest that was like pinball in the latter stages as both sides threw everything in their hunt for a deciding goal.

Even Marco Silva struggled to make sense of it all. ‘A strange game, a typical FA Cup match if I may say,’ insisted the Fulham boss. ‘The game was too broken for me to enjoy as a manager.’

It has been 50 years since Sunderland won the FA Cup and their impressive display was perhaps marred by a first-half injury to talisman Ross Stewart but they can hold their heads high.

The Black Cats priority lies in the Championship but Mowbray’s youthful side — which finished with nine players aged 22 or younger at full — showed no signs of taking this competition lightly.

A replay was the least that they and their magnificent travelling support deserved. ‘It was an extraordinarily young team who put in a good performance,’ said Mowbray. ‘If anything, there’s a bit of frustration that we didn’t see the game through.’ Silva made seven changes from the Fulham side that lost to Tottenham while Mowbray made just the one alteration from the team that beat Middlesbrough last weekend.

And it took just six minutes for the Sunderland fans who had made the trip to be rewarded when Clarke nicked the ball off Issa Diop and calmly finished past Marek Rodak.

Just as it looked like everything was going to plan for the visitors, Stewart pulled up inside the Fulham box. You couldn’t help but feel like it was a pivotal moment in their season. Despite the forward missing 15 league games this campaign, his tally of 10 goals in the Championship gives the ‘Loch Ness Drogba’ the best minutes-per-goal ratio in the division.

Still Sunderland posed a persistent threat, particularly down the right flank, with their quick link-up play. Patrick Roberts, formerly of Fulham, was a handful all afternoon

and he set up Amad Diallo but the Manchester United loanee dragged his shot wide.

Sunderland keeper Anthony Patterson was called into action in dramatic fashion on the brink of half-time. Andreas Pereira’s volley looked destined to crash into the back of the net yet Daniel Ballard was back on the line and his shin deflected the ball to the keeper and away from danger.

The second half was borderline chaos with end-to-end action from the off. Hugh Grant, a Fulham fan and in attendance at Craven Cottage, would certainly have approved.

Harry Wilson forced Patterson into a flying save before Roberts and Diallo combined again but the latter’s shot was kept out. From the resulting corner, Fulham broke but Wilson could find no way past Patterson. At the other end, a buccaneering run from Roberts nearly had the perfect finish but his strike rolled wide.

Mowbray had his hands on his head and the visitors were made to rue their missed chances just minutes later as Fulham levelled on the hour mark. Layvin Kurzawa picked out Cairney who sat down two Sunderland

defenders before unleashing a low left-footed strike that flew past Patterson.

Both managers looked to the bench. Neither fancied a replay. at the Stadium of Light. Silva threw on the likes of Willian and Aleksandar Mitrovic.

Mowbray turned to the kids and Rigg — who wasn’t even born when Willian made his debut — so nearly finished a story for the ages.

Fulham could have snatched it in added time but the superb Patterson denied Bobby Decordova-Reid and Willian. The whistle blew but frankly, this was a game that no one at Craven Cottage wanted to end.