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The coverage of the Championship playoff final, one of the biggest games in English football, usually centres around how much money the winner will be guaranteed with a place in the Premier League. Yet while that cash is significant (whoever wins can consider themselves around £180-200 million richer), for Sheffield Wednesday and Hull City and the 90,000 inside Wembley on Saturday, this game, day and occasion is not about finance but glory. It's about the glory of winning, of an entire season rewarded with a moment of extreme catharsis and joy. Very few of those in blue or amber, whichever team prevails, will be celebrating a balance sheet, simply that their team has won a colossal and highly pressured match. Promotion to the Premier League is a curious thing, because both teams know that should they get there, life will be extremely tough and survival will probably be the height of their realistic ambitions. But winning the playoff final is an achievement in itself, with a place in the top flight merely the reward they think about later, which is one of the reasons this game has become such a brilliantly tense encounter. "I bumped into Michael Johnson recently at Derby," Hull boss Steve Bruce said this weekend. "I'd had him at Birmingham and he said: 'Can you believe it is 14 years ago since we got up via the playoffs? It was the best day of my life, football wise'. "I think that shows what this can mean. It can be the best day of their footballing lives. You have to try and get that across to the players. "We know what is at stake, but the one thing that footballers don't worry about on the pitch is money. All this about it being a £200m game, it is not about that. Instead, it is just about performing on the biggest stage and someone being a hero. That is what we have to remember." And Hull certainly have more experience performing on that biggest stage. This will be their third trip to Wembley in the last two years, having been there for the FA Cup semifinal and final in 2014, something that will only reinforce their status as favourites. Not that Wednesday seem to have a problem with that. "We will go in completely as underdogs," Owls manager Carlos Carvalhal told the Sheffield Star this week. "Hull City have got a good coach and side. They are a very good team and, since the beginning, are more ready than us to achieve promotion. We will go in as underdogs but that doesn't mean we don't have a chance." Carvalhal may have been playing down his team's chances for his own purposes, but there's little doubt there's more pressure on Hull to win on Saturday. For a start, there is the uncertainty over their manager's future, but there's also the simple fact their aim was for a successful promotion campaign to already be completed by this point, and to be watching this game in a seafront bar somewhere, sipping from a drink with a little umbrella in it. For Bruce, this game could have even more significance. The Hull manager, who has guided his team to within a game of promotion at the first attempt, may not be in charge of the Tigers next season, no matter what the result. For the last six months there has been uncertainty over his future at Hull, but whenever he is asked Bruce has wearily and consistently maintained that he won't discuss his future until the summer. He maintains it has little to do with the uncertainty that surrounds the club at the moment, to which he has of course added. Owner Assem Allam, who last summer promised not to attend any matches this season after the Football Association blocked his attempts to change the club's name to the Hull Tigers, has been trying to sell the club he's been involved with for the last six years, thus far with no luck. Allam, who is currently ill and won't be at Wembley, also faces protests from the club's fans over a ticket scheme that would generously be described as controversial. The new arrangements will see overall prices lowered but all concessions, for OAPs and children, abolished. You can see why the masses aren't too happy. All of which doesn't exactly paint the picture of an especially harmonious or even stable club, but here they are, potentially just 90 minutes away from the Premier League. And if they do achieve that promotion, it will be Bruce's fourth, a feat no other manager has achieved. He took Birmingham up twice in his time at St Andrews, and similarly did so with Hull in 2013. Conversely, his opposite number on Saturday will be looking for his first promotion, on his first trip to Wembley, in his first season in England. Carvalhal was virtually unknown in this country when Wednesday appointed him last summer (Bruce admitted this week he'd never heard of him before he arrived in Yorkshire), and after they recruited 14 new players following the Portuguese's arrival, few expected such a slew of arrivals to be knitted together to form a promotion side. But after a shaky start, caused in part by the late transfer business, they recovered to establish themselves in the top six in the second half of the season, the form of Fernando Forestieri and, latterly, Gary Hooper driving them forwards. Hull, spearheaded by the 21 goals of top-scorer Abel Hernandez, were in contention for an automatic promotion place before a slump in February and March cast them adrift, ensuring they will have to negotiate perhaps the tensest game in English domestic football to reach the top flight. "It's an achievement getting to a Wembley cup final. It's not an achievement if we get beaten on Saturday," said Bruce this week. "We've finished fourth in the league and haven't been able to do it so there's no achievement in getting to a play-off final." Centre-back Curtis Davies was on message too, saying just after the semifinal: "Wembley is a day out. We don't want a day out, we want to get in the Premier League. The day out can be for the fans, that's all good, but as players we want to be back testing ourselves against the best players in the world." A victory on Saturday and they will be able to do just that. A whole season hinging on just one game, between two teams that over the entire campaign weren't among the three best in the division. It's a thrillingly unfair way of deciding things, but sometimes it's OK to be unfair. Few would change the magnificent tension of the playoffs, and nor should they.
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