Wembley roars and enraging Jose Mourinho: The greatest Luke O'Nien Sunderland moments

Some players were built for certain clubs, and that certainly seems to be the case with Luke O'Nien and Sunderland.

Author:
Michael Graham
Publish date:
Feb 6, 2024 10:32 PM EST

Luke O’Nien played his 250th game for Sunderland last month, and what a journey it has been.

There is a brilliant quote in the final episode of The Office (US), in which a reflective Andy Bernard says: “I wish there was a way to know you were in the good old days before you left them.”

Football is like that, and we don’t always take the time to properly appreciate what we have no because we are too busy stressing over what’s to come.

Kyril Louis-Dreyfus - Sunderland chairman

It sometimes feels like there is a danger of doing that with Luke O’Nien. Truly, we are currently living in the good old days of Luke O’Nien. Certainly, that’s what we will regard them as one day.

There are not many characters like the Sunderland captain and they don’t come along often. Make no mistake, he will be a Sunderland legend long after he pulls on the red and white stripes for the final time.

So, inspired by Andy Bernard, let’s all just take a moment to appreciate what we have right now and look at nine truly brilliant Luke O’Nien Sunderland moments.

Wembley roar

One of the reasons why O’Nien is such an enduring character at Sunderland is because he is all of us.

He loves his football, takes enormous pride in playing for Sunderland, works incredibly hard and gives it absolutely everything.

In the 2018 play-off final, one of the most heartbreaking images was O’Nien, literally bloodied from a bandaged head wound, sat on the Wembley turf devastated. It was an image that encapsulated how we all felt.

Four years later, O’Nien did it again. With a 2-0 win all but secured, O’Nien went for a meaty tackle with just a few minutes left.

It was on the halfway line, there was next to no danger, and the game was already won. He knelt on the Wembley turf again and, just as he did four years prior, he captured what every Sunderland fan was feeling in that moment.

He roared a roar of passion, pride, and exorcised himself and us of decades of Wembley heartbreak. It was a moment few Sunderland fans will ever forget.

Kick-starting promotion push

That’s what football is all about at the end of the day, isn’t it? Moments. They’re what we remember and they’re what changes everything. When Sunderland fans look back on the successful 2021/22 promotion campaign, what do you remember as the key moment?

Perhaps it was Bolton away? Patrick Roberts goal at Hillsborough? Alex Neil’s arrival? The late Nathan Broadhead winners against Gillingham and Shrewsbury?

Or was it the one we all forget?

Luke O’Nien had been missing for more than three months having shoulder surgery – surgery he’d put off as long as he could. He returned to the squad for a home game against Fleetwood and the situation was a bit desperate.

Sunderland were on a run of one win in eight games and were in danger of slipping out of the play-offs. He was on the bench and, with the scores level at 1-1, Alex Neil sent him on. Within 11 minutes, he put Sunderland ahead and they won the game.

Sunderland didn’t lose another game that season.

Piggyback time

Say what you want about Luke O’Nien, but you’d have to say he is an innovator, as Bristol City’s Alex Scott found out.

Last season as Scott was leading a counter-attack, O’Nien was struggling to get back or put himself in a position to make a challenge.

The solution? Just jump on the players’ back instead. Certainly innovative, although at the same time it’s hard to imagine any other player but O’Nien doing such a level of obvious s**thousing anywhere near as adorably.

Kiss heard around the world

While Alex Scott took O’Nien’s piggyback in a good spirit, it’s fair to say that Jacob Sorensen wasn’t quite so impressed with the Sunderland defender.

O’Nien got himself in a bit of a tussle with the Norwich midfielder and something told him that the way to diffuse it was to kiss him on the lips.

It didn’t really work, but it gave everyone else a really good laugh.

Asked why he had done it, O’Nien told Sky Sports: “So many people have asked this, I don’t know [why I did it]. No one goes into a game and plans to kiss someone, do they?

“As players we try to wind each other up, and normally people do it down the aggressive route.

“I tried an alternative route, and I think it worked a little bit.”

Sliding into the celebration

General rule of thumb: No matter where Luke O’Nien is on a football pitch when a Sunderland goal is scored, he generally makes it into the celebration.

We have seen recently when both Nazariy Rusyn and Mason Burstow scored their first goals for the club, O’Nien arrived to make sure they enjoyed the adulation of the fans.

Sometimes, though, he arrives a little bit more unconventionally, and that was certainly the case after Amad Diallo’s goal at Huddersfield last season.

Charlton volley

Luke O’Nien has scored 19 times for Sunderland so far. That surprised me a little as I have never really thought of him as much of a goalscorer.

Without a doubt, though, the best of them was just his second for the club.

O’Nien had just been moved to right-back, a position he made his own back in the day, and he enjoyed the freedom that position can sometimes afford you to arrive at the back post away and Charlton and place a controlled volley into the far corner.

A think of genuine beauty.

Literal lifesaver

Last year when stories started to emerge that Luke O’Nien had rushed towards a dog on the beach who had appeared to have drowned and gave it CPR to save its life, it was easy to assume they were just daft rumours.

In fact, had it been any other Sunderland player, they’d have been dismissed as just that with barely a second though. This was O’Nien though.

Naturally, it turned out that the stories were true, every word of them. Of course they were!

Enraging Jose Mourinho

Okay, so Jose Mourinho is not exactly difficult to annoy, but managing to get the former Chelsea and Man Utd manager to storm the pitch during a pre-season friendly is some going.

That is exactly what happened in the summer of 2022, though. O’Nien was playing for Sunderland against Mourinho’s Roma in Portugal.

He was booked in the 34^th minute for a late challenge on Stephan El Shaarawy and then caught another Roma player with an arm a short time later.

Mourinho came onto the pitch and asked for O’Nien to be substituted. Sunderland boss Alex Neil eventually complied following a request from the referee.

“Luke was unfortunate,” Neil said. “He went up for a header and caught the lad with his arm, which I didn’t think was meant. I thought it was a bit of an overreaction.

“But the referee informed me that if we didn’t take him off, he would be sent off.”

Prompting football’s greatest ever tweet

As we all know, the greatest ever football tweet was made by Roker Report. In the 2018 play-offs semi-final second leg at Fratton Park, Roker Report tweeted:

What has been lost a little is exactly why Lee Cattermole was fighting some Portsmouth fans. Naturally, it was because of Luke O’Nien.

He had been pushed into the stand after competing for the ball on the right-hand side and a Portsmouth fan had started literally kicking him whilst he was down.

O’Nien jogged away smiling while Cattermole and Roker Report created Twitter immortality.