'You're that geezer...' - Darren Bent reflects on infamous 'beach ball' goal for Sunderland

The ex-Black Cats hitman bagged the winner against the Reds in the most bizarre of circumstances after his shot on goal deflected past Pepe Reina when it hit an errant beach ball that had been thrown onto the pitch by a travelling fan.

And Bent has admitted that the fluke strike still follows him around to this day.

Speaking on talkSPORT about his goal-scoring exploits in the Premier League, he said: “[I scored] 106, but people try and say 105 because of the beach ball, which I don’t like!"

Fellow pundit Ally McCoist responded: "I’ll bet that’s the one that most people remember.”

Bent replied: “It’s the only one that people remember.

"People go, ‘Oh, you’re that geezer who scored the beach ball goal, aren’t you?’.

"I did this thing on Zoom last night for Zoom Ballers, it’s like kids, they Zoom in and I spoke to about 200 kids on a Zoom call.

"I’m answering questions, and I knew at some stage, that question was going to come up, and of course it did. ‘Are you the guy who scored the beach ball goal? How did it feel when you scored off the beach ball?’.

"It’s such a difficult question to answer.

"Imagine if there was VAR – chalked off! It would, it would be chalked off, wouldn’t it?

"It would be annoying because obviously if a goal is scored when it deflects on an outside interference, it shouldn’t count. That was the rule back then.”