“Of course I’d swap it for a win in the play-offs,” McCarthy reflected. “I’d rather be in the Premiership than in the fourth round of the FA Cup But it still doesn’t half taste nice.”. Four minutes later, from a free-kick wide on the right, Welsh curled the ball directly into the Palace net.It was little more than Sunderland deserved, and they were in front on the hour, Stewart burying his penalty after collapsing to the ground, apparently tripped by Fitz Hall. His over-the-top tackle on Collins deserved a booking, and invited the retaliatory challenge that earned the Sunderland defender a yellow card a minute later.Johnson was celebrating in the 41st minute when Wayne Routledge’s low cross from the right was poked in at close range, though television replays showed clearly that it was Collins who had applied the scoring touch – a fact the defender himself later volunteered. As it was, though, the Palace celebrations did not last very long.

Stephen Elliott and Stewart also spurned openings for Sunderland and it took 33 minutes for the much-vaunted Andy Johnson to make any impression for Palace. Welsh, making his full debut after a substitute appearance at Preston last week, ought to have opened the scoring in the fifth minute but snatched hastily with a left-foot volley, hitting the cross-bar from five yards. “We did not play in the manner of a side who thought this was an important competition,” the Palace manager said, distinctly unhappy on the occasion of his 40th birthday. “We didn’t perform enough for our pride and for the supporters who were here and who were stuck on the A1. I’m not going to accept a performance like that.”Palace were off the pace from the start, and fortunate not to be a goal or two behind in the opening quarter of an hour.

They did so courtesy of an in-swinging free-kick by the highly impressive Andy Welsh, on this evidence a £15,000 steal from Stockport.Still, it was a deserved success for Sunderland, who showed greater hunger – a fact not lost on Iain Dowie. The Black Cats were obliged to claw their way back on to level terms after Neill Collins had gifted Palace the lead with an own goal. Dickov served further notice of Blackburn’s ever-present danger two minutes later when his run and shot was denied once more by the impressive Warner, but Kavanagh’s 30-yard screamer in the 74th minute, that fizzed over with Friedel beaten, ensured the momentum remained with the home side in a rumbustious ending “We hounded them,” said Lee So they did But not every underdog has its day.. The gale that damaged the roof of the Stadium of Light and caused the closure of the north-east stand yesterday was probably the most forceful blast in Sunderland since Mick McCarthy’s raging reaction to the Black Cats’ pussy-footing play-off semi-final penalty shoot-out loss to Crystal Palace last season. But his respite was only as long as the break, with Cardiff tearing into their supposed superiors as soon as the referee whistled the restart.Junichi Inamoto, on loan from West Brom, called on all the undoubted talent of Friedel to turn away the Japan international’s 25-yard piledriver in the 53rd minute, and with the inspirational qualities of Barry Ferguson lost after the captain hobbled off, Blackburn looked short of both the spirit and the know-how to cope with this burgeoning threat.The introduction of Paul Gallagher for the ineffective Jon Stead on the hour redressed the balance somewhat and it was the Scottish substitute’s cross in the 64th minute that was turned in by Thompson, but the goal was disallowed for Paul Dickov’s push on Warner.

“They could have got a bus through there,” said the City manager, Lennie Lawrence The rest of Cardiff fell silent. Or almost.There was still their usual anti-English repertoire to go through, until a legitimate justification for the foul-mouthed arrived in the 29th minute when an unseemly row between Dominic Matteo and Richard Langley spilled over into something much more ugly as a series of scuffles broke out between the two sides. “Incidents like that can help to get the adrenalin going and make you roll up your sleeves,” said the Cardiff striker Alan Lee. “So it certainly helped us to get back into the game.”It certainly helped Lee get into the game as it was his arching header off a Graham Kavanagh cross six minutes later that levelled the match “How he got that in I’ll never know,” said Lawrence. But Brad Friedel knew, the ball having deflected off the crossbar on to the hapless American’s back and in.The sting was well and truly back, with Jobi McAnuff in particular causing havoc on the left flank, and Hughes was a relieved manager to be heading in all square after his former Wales defender Daniel Gabbidon failed by a matter of centimetres to turn in a Kavanagh free-kick with time running down. Hughes’s directive, no doubt, was for Blackburn to take the sting out the situation as quickly as possible and his men were true to his word when the Norwegian international Morten Gamst Pedersen strolled on to David Thompson’s incisive through ball in the fifth minute, before lofting it over Tony Warner. There may be little over a mile between them, but Ninian Park in January is as far removed as you can get from the Millennium Stadium in May.