And in the 36th minute Stewart pulled a goal back with a 30-yards-plus strike which he admits was far from typical of his goals.

“I was very rarely the person that would score from distance,” he said. “I was always a fox in the box, so I was a bit surprised that I reached, that’s the honest truth! And I was a bit surprised that it went in the top corner because I just aimed for the goal, I didn’t aim for the top corner, it just went in the top corner.

“Very rarely do you take a shot as a footballer and think you’re going to aim for the top corner. You just aim for the middle of the goal and generally it comes off the side of your foot or doesn’t go as accurately as you intended and it ends up going into the corner of the net.

“And that’s exactly what happened to me. At the time when Matt Holland passed the ball to me it was bouncing and I didn’t know whether I was going to take a shot or not. I had an instinct to do the right thing at the right time and I felt ‘Why not have a shot?’ because it sat up so nicely for me. And it went in.

“It wasn’t planned and I didn’t think I was going to take a shot, the weight of the ball and the weight of the pass made me doing it really, I suppose. And I reached!”

He says that goal changed the mood of the game with the third goal always destined to be crucial.

“In football at 2-0 down, the next goal is so important. Whether you go 3-0 down or draw it back to 2-1 the psychology changes.

“If it’s 2-1 then you’re back on the front foot again. I think that third goal was so important, whoever got that. If they get the third goal it’s not dead and buried necessarily, but very rarely does a team come back from 3-0 down, so it was important to get the next goal and we did.

“I wasn’t thinking that at the time. I wasn’t thinking ‘Right, it’s important for us to get it’, I didn’t look at it like that, I just knew that that group of players still had a chance because we were quite resilient.”

Twenty minutes into the second half Stewart levelled with they type of goal which would become more familiar to Town fans over the next couple of years.

“I’ve looked back at it loads of times and for me it was an instinct, it was right thing to do at the right time,” he reflected.

“People can call it composure or whatever but I think there’s a really thin line between being composed and confident and being overconfident.

“And I think I was treading that line do thinly at the time because I think if I go around the goalkeeper and I miss it, everyone would be saying ‘Why didn’t you just shoot earlier, why didn’t you do this, why didn’t you do that?’.

“That’s the difference between confidence and being overconfident. For me it was the right thing to do, I didn’t do it because I was trying to make it look a good goal, I did it because I thought it was the right thing to do.

“If I thought it was right to take the shot early I would have done that but at that moment I thought it was right to take it round the goalkeeper and put it back across the goal. It was a strange one really. It’s hard to explain it.

“My first goal against Barnsley was very similar to the one against Bolton, the difference was that I put it in with my right foot.

“Was I coached to do that? No, I wasn’t. No one ever coached me to do that. I think it’s just instinct and you get it right or you get it wrong. But generally in those times I got it right.”

Having been two behind, the 2-2 scoreline was a very positive outcome for the Blues ahead of the second leg at Portman Road, a game which no one who was there will ever forget.

“We were obviously pleased, but there was another leg to play at home and they were quite a shrewd, aggressive, streetwise team, as we found out when they came down to our place,” he said.

“They went a bit overboard a couple of times, tried to intimidate Jim Magilton before his penalty, all sorts of that stuff going on, which you would expect from a Sam Allardyce team.

“But that group of players had everything. We were resilient, we could be aggressive, we could pass the ball, we had good team spirit, we had everything and I think that’s what it takes to get to the Premier League, and we had it.”

Reflecting on the match, which famously ended 5-3 after extra time to the Blues, who had been awarded three penalties, two scored, with Bolton ending the match with nine men, he said: “It was a strange game, it was quite a tough game to play in on the pitch, there was a lot of aggressive stuff going on out there, intimidation and stuff, it was a tough game to play in.

“When you go a goal down [Holdsworth again after six minutes], you’ve got to stay mentally strong and that group of players did.

“At the end Tony Mowbray went up front and knocked down to Jim Magilton to get his hat-trick to take us into extra-time.

“We went on and Jamie Clapham scored the penalty and then Martijn Reuser got the fifth goal.

“That team was probably the best team I’ve played in. We had everything in that team, we had people who could come off the bench and make a difference, we had players that were team players and we had match winners on the pitch, whether it was defenders or the goalkeeper or strikers. We had proper match winners.

Photo: Action Images

Linkboy13 added 20:35 - May 14 What great memories. I can remember thinking we're out of this being very pessimistic. Then Marcus Stewart showed what a class finisher he was first goal was good but his second was far better because he had so much too do. I can remember him scoring a similar goal at Liverpool such a cool finisher. Of course Jim Magilton stole the show in the second leg of the play offs . Two players with a touch of class proving they can do it in the big games.

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PortmanTerrorist added 17:02 - May 15 It did feel a long way from home when 2 down and with 2 of our starters off the pitch....and i remember us saying "#### - Stewart is limping now". Was that obvious in the stands and felt like the final straw until seconds later he hits a miracle shot past Jussi Jääskeläinen before mugging him later for his second. Stewart should have had 4 that day, but remember still thinking that we had got away with it up there as we were all in fear of Guðjohnsen, who we simply could not get to grips with. He really was in the wrong league by some distance. Thankfully Guðjohnsen was not fit for second leg and the rest is history.....unfortunately Those Were The Days indeed.

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