Who needs horror films when you've got the play-off finals?

By Ian Winwood

Published 12:01 27/05/11

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In their quest to shock, filmmakers have mined new depths of depravity. We’ve had the Saw series. We’ve had the Hostel movies. We’ve had remakes of The Hills Have Eyes, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, A Nightmare On Elm Street and Friday The 13th.

But there is one real-life horror show that is so gruelling, so unpleasant and so taxing that not even the wickedest mind in Hollywood would dare to translate it to celluloid.

It is called The Play-off Finals.

This weekend, fans of Stevenage and Torquay (League Two), Huddersfield and Peterborough (League One) and Reading and Swansea (Championship) will experience what will either be the most exquisite or the most heartbreaking afternoon of their lives as football fans.

Win or lose, though, you can guarantee this: the experience will be intense. Achingly, horribly intense.

There are some people - a lot of people - who believe the Champions League Final is the most significant game of the season. These people are wrong, and here’s why"

If Manchester United or Barcelona lose the game at Wembley tomorrow, all that happens is that they’ve lost the game. There is no more to it than that.

The same goes for the FA Cup Final, and for the League Cup Final.

But to lose in a play-off final means that your season, come August, will be entirely different from the team that won it.

If Swansea triumph, the next campaign will see their team bus pull up at the players’ entrance at Old Trafford, the Emirates and, er, Carrow Road. The losing team will visit Watford, Coventry and Barnsley. Just as they did the year before.

Talk about disheartening.

Winning a play-off final means a better class of football, a better class of stadia. Losing means returning to square one. It’ll seem as if a whole season has amounted to nothing.

And it’ll seem that way, because that’s exactly the way it is.

I would even wager that losing one of this weekend's finals is actually worse than seeing your team relegated.

Relegation is the confirmation of a fear that looks increasingly probable as the season progresses. But losing in the play-off final is the dashing of a hope at the last possible moment.

My friend Dan Silver, the editor of this website, and I have, between us, four play-off finals.

We have each seen one victory and one defeat for our respective clubs.

That neither of us enjoyed the defeat is obvious. But, really, neither of us enjoyed the victory that much either. It’s just too damn stressful.

It’s great once you’ve been promoted. But until that final whistle goes, it’s horrible.

The play-off finals are a cruel and unusual punishment, something I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

So if you’re headed to one this weekend, you be sure and enjoy your day.

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