Inside the night Sunderland's brilliant and thrilling season came to a painful end

There wasn't much time to think, here.

The noise is deafening and the opposition are swarming and bloody hell, here comes yet another set piece. And yet on more than occasion through the most torrid of first half the thought occurs: Oh no, not like this.

It was the game you feared, the game in which you dared to hope Tony Mowbray's patched-up side might just find a way to play their way through the fury one last time. They couldn't.

Luton ruthlessly exploited Sunderland's weakness from dead-ball situations but that they were able to do so was testament first and foremost to their work out of possession. Sunderland, not helped by the bumps and bruises their already battered and bruised squad had sustained on Saturday, lacked their usual precision and that was all Luton needed. In midfield they snapped into challenges with fervour and frenzy and on the rare moments they didn't steal it back there and then, backwards they raced in numbers. Comrade in arms, Mowbray had called them and here they defended the Kenilworth Road turf like nothing else would ever matter this much again.

Mowbray has trained himself not to deploy the stock phrase that became a lightning rod for criticism during the latter days of his tenure at Middlesbrough but sometimes, really, it is what it is. In this case: A mismatch.

To their credit Sunderland found a way to stay in it, and that collapse you feared deep down might be in the offing never materialised. Mowbray freshened up the side, they began to see more of the ball and they did as the pledged they would do - they took it right to the end. There were flashes but in truth they were little more than that, Luton flooded back to protect their box and Sunderland were never really able to find a way to open them up.

It just wasn't their time. No, not this time. Not with no fit centre-halves. Not without the club captain, the only holding midfielder with any real experience of playing the role on this sort of night. Not without a left back. Not without a striker who could give them a genuine out ball, either into feet or over the top. Not without the striker who lives and dies between the width of the posts, to be there on the rare moments Amad and Roberts were there to get to the byline.

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If anything, all of this served as a reminder of why by rights, this group should never have been here in the first place. With just a day of training under his belt Aji Alese came in for the final half hour and immediately, here was a difference. He won duels, he won headers, he stepped out on the ball and he brought Jack Clarke into the game. He even tried to get up front on a few occasions, reprising one of the left-field innovations that typified the spirit of flexibility and tenacity that has carried a revitalised football team and football club further and faster than anyone had dared to believe might be possible.

This was just one game, one night too far.

Defeat in a play-off semi final brings with it a unique and particularly painful brand of finality. Another fortnight of of thrilling anxiety and the dream of one final flourish hovers just at the end your fingertips and with one whistle it dissipates and the pitch is being swarmed and the haze of the orange flares are in your nostrils and the noise of 10,000 bouncing to One Step Beyond threatens to split you ears.

And then, just like that, something is gone forever. No more Amad and Roberts, no more of those audacious 1-2s, clever little backheels and nutmegs. No more of the partnership that broke this season open and changed the perception of what this Sunderland team was and could be.

The change may not end there. Mowbray sat despondent in the bowels of the ground, where the floors were sticky and the stale lager hung in the air and the walls still shook with the celebrations above, himself openly wondering if the speculation in recent weeks meant this could be the end of the road for him. And again the thought comes you to: Oh no, not like this.

He, and the squad he has so patiently and so thrillingly moulded, have changed this club's sense of self and with it its place in football's dialogue.

No longer a basket case, no longer a sleeping giant. They are the team you see on your twitter feed every other week, casually scoring from their own goal kicks. They're the team playing nine midfielders and not just getting away with it, but riding it all the way to the play-offs.

They are a team and a club heading for the Premier League, whenever that might finally be. Alex Neil's side changed the narrative and this team, this head coach, have written a most thrilling sequel.

This is a season that will endure, even if this end was a deflation out of step with so much of what has come before.

"I'm very proud of the players, the supporters and the city of Sunderland - we'll get stronger and we'll be back next season," Mowbray said.

There is much to settle and much to determine and much to get right before then but here's a thing: You strongly suspect that they will be.

There was pain here, of that there is no doubt but how quickly it turns to pride tells you the story of this season. About Amad, about the pre-match revels, about the false nines and the false fours and the false threes and the Puskas contenders and everything in between. The start of something.