Inside the incredible moment Sunderland scaled a new peak at West Brom and left fans dreaming about the play-offs

This was the moment Sunderland's season, baffling and brilliant in equal measure, scaled a new peak.

Tony Mowbray's side had broken away quickly, turning a threatening West Brom attack into one of their own. Alex Pritchard carried the ball deep into the opposition half and then, well, the home side recovered. They dropped in, cut down the potential avenues to goal, and slowed the game down.

So Sunderland did what Sunderland now do. They simply started again. One patient switch of play after another, pass and then pass again. Then Edouard Michut draws in the press and quickens up the pace. Before you know it, they are ahead.

For the second time Tony Mowbray is left wondering, what is he doing there? Why is the kid supposed to be on the left of my back three popping up on the edge of the six-yard box?

This, though, is the perfect expression of why this season has proven to be more fun and more exciting than it ever should have been. Sunderland had a go, and they found a way. Their way.

It had looked a long way off in the opening exchanges of this game. They had travelled without a number nine and without a centre half. The closest thing they had to that wouldn't arrive until just a couple of hours before kick off, sleepless and about to take on the toughest job on the pitch.

They had travelled without eight senior players, injuries biting harder than ever at the crucial point of the season. They were travelling to face a side who had not lost at The Hawthorns since October, Carlos Corberan's first game in charge. Even that defeat had been to Sheffield United, riding even higher then than they do now.

Such was the magnitude of the game, the Baggies revived an old tradition and played 'The Liquidator' just before kick off. The home fans celebrated like it was an early goal, and Sunderland struggled to get out. West Brom found space out wide, they pressed aggressively, they got to the byline easily and they made Sunderland look like exactly what they are: an inexperienced, diminutive side with square pegs in round holes everywhere you look.

And yet they are also something else, a team that can keep the ball quite unlike any we have seen in recent times. Slowly but surely they found the space, found the pass, found their feet.

True enough they rarely carved their opposition open, familiar problems getting bodies into the box and shots away from close range. What they undoubtedly had was control and so to go in behind at the break felt like a cruel blow, maybe a sign that this game would just be one too far. The penalty was soft but O'Nien was candid after - it was a challenge that risked the decision. Either side of that lunge he was exemplary, barely a pass out of place despite all the upheaval and the adrenaline and the exhaustion of the days previous.

So perhaps we should have known better. This is a relatively inconsistent team, yes, and a team that can lose games, for sure. It's the youngest in the EFL, and so that is to be expected.

It's a team that can struggle at home, still at least a window away from finding the perfect balance, from being able to add brawn to the brain. But it's also a team that invariably competes and as Mowbray himself told them in the half-time interval, it's a team that basically always scores. Don't worry, we always score. So will we score two?

Sunderland didn't dominate the second half, not even close. Corberan said his side had the better of it and that was fair comment, only defending of the absolute last-ditch variety preventing the game being as good as settled just minutes before Dennis Cirkin's first unscheduled visit to delirium.

Even in the latter stages and as when many of the home support began to drift away, Corberan's side ran and threatened and almost overwhelmed. They felt they should have taken something from this and they were probably right.

Mowbray felt his side just about deserved the three points and given all the hurdles they jumped along the way, he was probably right too. The borderline comical gap in height between the two sides had forced him and his coaching staff to rip up their marking system in the absence of Danny Batth, but one admittedly dangerous header from Conor Townsend in the second half was pretty much all they yielded.

The substitutions were immaculate, Michut bringing composure and Pritchard are big injection of energy. Both were at the heart of it when Sunderland struck, the moment they leapt for sixth and for now at least, landed.

There will be plenty of time and space for all the play-off permutations in the days ahead, for the anxiety and the dreaming and the trying to keep feet on the ground.

You could draw up a fairly long list of reasons this doesn't end in a top-six spot and if you were, West Brom basically being a pretty good team with a game-in-hand would be somewhere near the top.

Sometimes you've just got to stop and enjoy the moment. This one's worth dwelling on for a little while yet.