With Sam Dalby’s second-half overhead kick, Bolton could start to plan their return to the Championship, a division they left in 2019 as a club in turmoil. After administration, last-minute sales, emergency loans, points deductions and a spell in League Two, they have found their way back.
Stockport, themselves a club on the rise following financial trouble that took them down to the sixth tier, were game opponents in Bolton’s second League One playoff final in three years but were overpowered at Wembley. With the score level at 1-1 after an hour, Steven Schumacher sent on Sam Dalby and by the 81st minute the substitute had stretched Bolton’s lead to 3-1 with a picture-book goal. Rúben Rodrigues’s late penalty against 10 men added gloss to the scoreline.
Ian Evatt suggested his Bolton team had succumbed to “pressure and fear” on their last appearance in this game two years ago, a 2-0 defeat to Oxford United. This time their supporters – who with bucket hats, sun cream and beach balls aplenty were just as equipped for a day at the beach in 30-degree heat – set an upbeat tone. Schumacher’s players responded right from kick-off.
The winger Thierry Gale, cutting inside from the left, took only a couple of minutes to test Corey Addai in the Stockport goal. Addai could only parry the long-range effort and Mason Burstow pounced, his cutback prodded out by the defender Ethan Pye but Rodrigues, on the opposite side for Oxford in the 2024 playoff final, drilled in the loose ball.
The Stockport manager, Dave Challinor, is not one to panic in these situations. This was the 12th playoff campaign of his coaching career, including with Colwyn Bay in the 2010-11 Northern Premier League and last season’s League One semi-final exit to Leyton Orient. His striker Adama Sidibeh left the Bolton captain, George Johnston, on the deck when chasing a long ball in behind before beating Jack Bonham at his near post. The referee, Josh Smith, was sent to the pitchside monitor and chalked the goal off, adjudging Sidibeh to have tripped Johnston on the way through.
Stockport’s momentum only grew after the first-half drinks break. Some hesitant Bolton defending allowed Josh Stokes to prod a shot at goal that Bonham, diving down to his right, got a hand to. Bonham was left rooted moments later when Odin Bailey’s inswinging cross was glanced into the bottom corner by an inspired Sidibeh.
A sensational run from Jordi Osei-Tutu, in which the right-back won the ball, ran the length of the Stockport half and had a shot blocked by Pye, left Bolton feeling a bit better about themselves heading into the break. Addai was tested again within minutes of the restart, pushing away a Josh Sheehan shot identical to Gale’s in the first half. The chances kept coming, Rodrigues skewing his effort wide after Gale had won the ball off Josh Dacres-Cogley in the area.
The Stockport centre-back Kyle Wootton went into the book for a late sliding tackle on Rodrigues on halfway but it was about to get worse for him. Burstow flicked a ball round the corner for Amario Cozier-Duberry to run on to and Addai got down well to get fingertips on the low shot, only for Wootton to touch it into the back of his own net as he slid in to try to block it.
Photograph: Nigel French/PA
This time Challinor blinked, hauling off his entire front three, and was almost rewarded immediately. His substitute striker Isaac Olaofe would have scored from close range had Bonham not spread himself brilliantly to block the shot. Dalby’s acrobatic third ended Stockport’s hopes of a fourth promotion in seven years. The sending-off of Dacres-Cogley, who joined Stockport from Bolton in January, for a hair pull on Ibrahim Cissoko in the box and Rodrigues’s dispatching of the resulting penalty only made the day sweeter for those in white.