Swansea savour win that brings Premier League to Principality

The venue may not be quite as exotic as Sydney, Hong Kong and New York, but the Premier League's expansion plans are nevertheless back on: not just a 39th game in foreign parts, but a full 19 matchdays. That is how often the previously all-English elite league will cross the Severn Bridge next season after Swansea City planted the Welsh dragon firmly in the top flight.

It is the first time a Welsh club have been in the top flight in 30 years. As recently as 2003, with Leon Britton and Alan Tate of yesterday's players in the team, they won at Hull on the last day of the season to escape dropping out of the Football League. Now they leave the competition by the front door, going into the Premier League virtue of a devastating three-goal, 20-minute spell in the first-half that should have killed the game off. That it did not was tribute to Reading's resilience. Brian McDermott's team were the width of the post away from levelling the game with half an hour to go but then Scott Sinclair scored his second penalty to complete his hat-trick, the first in a play-off final since Charlton's Clive Mendonca in 1998.

The result is a relief for the Football Association and Football League for it banishes any lingering concern that there could be a challenge over their decision not to deduct points from QPR following the Alejandro Faurlin affair. Swansea, as the third-placed finisher, were the team that could have been granted automatic promotion had the Championship winners been so penalised. Instead they have won promotion on merit.

The Swansea manager Brendan Rodgers, who spent two decades at Reading as a player, coach and manager, often working alongside McDermott, said: "It was a funny sort of day. My professional head was to do the job for Swansea, for the way they have accepted me into their lives, but my connection with Reading made it a strange one."

In a lively start both teams attempted to impose their game, Jimmy Kebe and Shane Long pressuring Swansea, Sinclair running at the Reading defence and forcing Matt Mills to concede a dangerously placed free-kick. The next time Sinclair received possession Andy Griffin ploughed through the back of him and was cautioned. He was soon joined in Phil Dowd's book by Borini and Zurab Khizanishvili after a minor contretemps.

If the yellow cards suggested Dowd wanted to stamp his authority on the game, they backfired because, after 21 minutes, Khizanishvili committed an offence which did deserve a booking, but Dowd shied away from dismissing him. Dyer, played onside by Ian Harte, turned inside him only to be tripped by the Georgian. Sinclair rolled home the penalty with great aplomb. Seventy-five seconds later the England under-21 international scored again. Stephen Dobbie burst past Harte from midfield and Adam Federici could only palm the cross out for Sinclair to tap in.

Five minutes from the break it looked as if Swansea had made the game safe. Dyer flew past Jobi McAnuff on the right and delivered a cross which was cleared only as far as Dobbie, who thrashed the ball past Federici for his second goal in successive play-off finals (he scored here last year, while on loan to Blackpool, against Cardiff).

Reading were in meltdown, their mood not improved when the normally reliable Long mis-kicked four yards out as injury-time approached. In the tunnel during the break substitute Jay Tabb and assistant manager Nigel Gibbs were both shown red cards after accosting the officials.

All over then? Not at all. When the dressing room calmed down McDermott had a simple message: "Don't worry about four goals, try and get the next one." Three minutes after the interval Reading again attempted a near-post corner routine from which Hunt had gone close in the first half. This time he got there first and the ball flew in off Joe Allen. Game back on.

Eight minutes later Kebe forced another corner. This one was played into the centre and Mills rose above Garry Monk to head in. Now belief, and disbelief, flooded the ground. With Swansea clearly rattled, Reading worked the ball to Jem Karacan on the edge of the box and he thudded a shot goalwards. Crucially Ashley Williams's attempted block diverted it onto the post. "I thought if we got two, we'd get a third, and if that had gone in there was only one winner," said McDermott. "Going to 3-2 allowed us to refocus," said Rodgers. "We're not just style, we have substance too."

So it proved, and Reading's coffin was nailed back down again when Griffin needlessly flattened Borini 12 minutes from time. Sinclair again drove the ball to Federici's right.

At the final whistle the Reading end emptied within minutes; no match in the game's calendar produces such desolation for the defeated as play-off finals. While Swansea's fans celebrated, for the players there was a moment of quiet contemplation before the party began. Prior to the presentation they pulled on T-shirts commemorating Besian Idrizaj, the 22-year-old Austrian who was a team-mate until his sudden death a year ago this month. Rodgers, too, briefly paused to gesture to the Heavens. His mother died in February last year, at the age of 53. Then it was off for one of those laps of honour no-one wants to end.