Sheffield Wednesday supporters outshine Hull City's professional win to underline battered club's true worth
Hull City professionally dismantled game opposition to move closer to a Championship play-off place which looked way out of reach in the summer, yet the day belonged to Sheffield Wednesday as they edged nearer to historic humiliation.
They may not have joined the dots immediately but in years to come, two young Hull fans who sat in front of the press box will realise Saturday was when they learnt what a big club the small-time team in gaudy lilac away shirts was playing for.
Struggling for form and results as the chasing pack move up the gears, the Tigers deserve credit for responding to Jamal Lowe's opening goal to claim a 3-1 win that ended up looking more routine than it was.
Once Hull made the last half-hour a non-event it was hard to take eyes and ears off Sheffield Wednesday.
Not the players taking more physical and psychological hits in a losing cause. Try as they might, they do not properly represent the 158-year-old institution and its evocative name.
But their 2,298 away fans showed why the life support machine should not be humanely switched off.
They only sang six words but incessantly and passionately, twirling shirts and scarves above their heads to a rhythm so captivating, the two young boys hundreds of yards away could not help but jig along. No one admonished them for innocently breaking fan etiquette. It was time to let Wednesday have their moment.
The self-importance of the comatose giants can grate or amuse at times, particularly on fans of other Yorkshire clubs, especially those from red-and-white pockets of their city, but when those lads are dads or granddads, they will cite Saturday – maybe grudgingly, possibly pityingly – as to why they have a point.
Hull fans piped up with "Wednesday get battered everywhere they go," once it was clear the Owls were suffering the 29th defeat of a season 39 Championship games old.
It had been 181 days since they last won and as that was 200 miles away in Portsmouth even some of the frankly insane die-hards in the away end would not have been there.
"Wednesday are massive everywhere we go," they responded, again and again and again until you could not help but get the message. Then they did it some more.
It is safe to assume none were around when Wednesday were last champions of England in 1930 or FA Cup winners in 1935. Some will have only seen the 1991 League Cup win on DVD or YouTube but all are addicted – tragically, you might say – not to the husk of a club Dejphon Chansiri left behind, but what it stands for and could be again.
"Sometimes it can be hard to stay alone and just go on," manager Henrik Pedersen said of a squad with just seven more chances for the six points needed to avoid being the first English team to end a league season on minus points.
"We have never felt we were alone. We always have our fans around us to push us, to help us.
"In this tough situation there is always a reason why not to do something. But there is always a reason to do something, and one of them is we have some incredible fans.
"Without the fans we are not a big club, with the fans we are a big club."
That determination was seen in the early stages of a game with no bearing on what division the Owls will play in next season, but which felt important to Hull having a shot at the Premier League.
When Lowe poked the ball into the net via a deflection, it looked like they might cock it up.
They had had the better of the opening 23 minutes but only a saved Oli McBurnie shot, gifted by Sean Fusire's doziness, to show for it.
Yet when Matt Crooks equalised 94 seconds later, you looked nervously at the floodgates.
But the next save was Ivor Pandur's, from Jarvis Thornton, and the next goal only seconds before half-time, McBurnie trying and failing to head in Paddy McNair's free-kick, Dominic Iorfa doing so trying not to.
Hull upped the ante after the break, Kyle Joseph’s excellence rewarded when Tayo Adaramola was mugged and he exchanged passes with McBurnie. With bigger battles ahead, they soon powered down.
"It's about the results, no matter how," said Sergej Jakirovic, whose team have defied a transfer ban to put themselves in that position.
If it was only about results for the Owls, the away end would have been empty and there might not even still be a club. But there always will be.
With apologies to Hull, who will have more opportunities to celebrate a great season when they return from a fortnight off to complete it, that was Saturday's story.
Hull City: Pandur; Drameh, Ajayi, Egan, McNair; Slater (Lundstram 30), Crooks (Dowell 80); Joseph (Belloumi 80), Gelhardt (Koumas 69), Millar (Hadziahmetovic 69); McBurnie.
Unused substitutes: Coyle, Phillips, Collyer, McCarthy.
Sheffield Wednesday: Charles; Fusire, Iorfa (McGhee 85), Otegbayo, Palmer, Adaramola (M Lowe 63); Thornton (McNeill 63), Ingelsson (Chalobah 85); Heskey, J Lowe (Ndala 73); Yates.
Unused substitutes: Stretch, Ugbo, Nakamba, Grainger.
Referee: D Whitestone (Northampton).