Doncaster Rovers 5 Southend United 1: Coppinger's treble sends Rovers to Wembley
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Your support makes all the difference.Sean O'Driscoll has cornered the market in understatement. Fortunately his football team are far more eloquent and expressive. They certainly justified their tag as the best exponents of the finer arts last night to book their place in the League One play-off final to give Gary McAllister, manager of opponents Leeds United, plenty of food for thought ahead of an intriguing Yorkshire argument at Wembley.
Such an emphatic victory would have most managers searching for the superlatives and waxing lyrical, apart from O'Driscoll that is, for whom the prospect of guiding Doncaster back into the second tier of English football for the first time in 50 years seemed about as exciting as a weekly trip to the supermarket.
Hopefully his deadpan assessment of the job only being "half done" and the necessuty of preventing his players from getting "too carried away" with this display, is just his way of dealing with the growing expectation in South Yorkshire.
It certainly cannot be a reflection of his motivational qualities on a side that could easily have capitulated after their failure to secure automatic promotion because of their defeat on the final day of the season against Cheltenham. James Coppinger was certainly primed to produce his very best, with a sublime hat-trick which doubled his goal return for the season.
Two solo runs and pin-point accurate shots from outside the box were joined by a wonderful curling free-kick from a similar distance leaving Southend manager Steve Tilson to concede: "I have said all season they are the best footballing team in the division and they proved it."
Southend's own aspirations of an instant return to the Championship virtually evaporated in the opening 21 minutes as they contributed heavily to their own downfall, conceding a penalty from which Brian Stock opened the scoring before Adam Barrett's own goal left them with virtually no-hope of salvation and Tilson will have found little consolation in Nicky Bailey's late goal as his side were dismantled, nut and bolt.
Doncaster: Sullivan, O'Connor, Mills, Hird, Roberts (Guy 68), Green, Stock, Wellens (McCammon 73), Coppinger, Price (Taylor 76), Hayter.
Southend: Flahavan, Francis, Clarke, Barrett, Mulgrew, Moussa, Bailey, McCormack, Gower, Barnard (Revell 62), Walker (MacDonald 62)
Referee: M Halsey (Hertfordshire)
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