IT’S SO NEAR, YET SO VAR...

Schoolboy Rigg almost makes history but Sunderland ‘winner’ is disallowed

FOR all the talk of the magic of the cup, this tie very nearly had the most magical of endings when 15-year-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 (below) would have become the youngest goalscorer in FA Cup history. As it was, the goal was disallowed with Abdoullah Ba offside in the build-up and Fulham and Sunderland will have to do it all again at the Stadium of Light after a crazy game that had 39 attempts on goal 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 manager 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.

‘Age is irrelevant for me. He brings energy as he showed and what a story that would have been — a 15-year-old coming on and scoring the winner.’ This was a proper cup tie. Jack Clarke’s early goal gave the youthful 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 end-to-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 manager. ‘The game was too broken for me to enjoy as a manager.’

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

Just as it looked like everything was going to plan for the visitors, talisman Ross Stewart pulled up inside the Fulham box, with a suspected Achilles injury. You couldn’t help but feel like it was a pivotal moment in their season.

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 to clear.

After the break, Harry Wilson forced Patterson into a flying save before Patrick Roberts and Amad 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 of the post.

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 left-footed strike past Patterson.

Both managers looked to the bench. Neither fancied a replay. 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.