To celebrate 25 years of the Premier League each week in Football Fancast we’re going to be looking back at a memorable game that took place on the corresponding date. This time out we revisit an incredible eight-goal thriller that saw the Canaries take flight.

In the closing game of 2004 Norwich City headed to the north-east already entrenched in a relegation dogfight. Having flown from the Championship as champions that May the Canaries had initially shown admirable resolve on entry into the top flight drawing eight of their opening twelve games but if that proved they had sufficient spirit and quality to contest among the elite it still only amounted to eight points. Then the losses came; a thumping at Charlton was followed by a thumping at Chelsea and soon after Spurs strolled into Carrow Road and easily outclassed them.

Here, in the north east, Nigel Worthington’s men saw out the year with another loss – worse yet a routine one – and as they travelled back from Middlesbrough we can assume the mood was sombre on the team bus. They knew what 2005 heralded: struggle, strife and a metaphorical swim against the tide.

Sure enough two further defeats chipped large chunks at their confidence and then through a quirk in the fixture schedule City faced Boro once again, this time on home turf.

This explains why Carrow Road erupted with such gusto when Damien Francis tapped in an early opener. It was the beckoning of fight and hinted at a much-needed victory against a very good Middlesbrough moulded into shape by Steve McClaren and heading for Europe. Up front Mark Viduka and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink bullied goals by the plentiful ahead of an ever-scheming Boudewijn Zenden; at the back Gareth Southgate and Ugo Ehiogu were a formidable pairing.

The Norfolk side was now a goal to the good over this challenging opposition and maybe 2005 wasn’t going to be such a tumultuous year after all?

By the 55^th minute however that hope already seemed like a forgotten dream. Franck Queudrue had twice exposed the home team’s fragile defence from corners and Hasselbaink had compounded matters by sticking an instinctive leg out to a wayward shot and when the Dutchman scored again late into the game the narrative was finalised. Norwich had lost again. They’d been outclassed again.

Hasselbaink’s second is worth returning to, a free-kick twenty five yards out that is dinked over the wall and somehow finds the corner of the net at ground height and travelling at speed. The trajectory is unique and strange and wonderful to behold belying the powerful persona of the striker responsible.

Thankfully for Norwich, at the other end lurked another powerful front-man, a debutant in the form of Dean Ashton who was signed only ten days earlier for a club record fee. With Norwich 4-1 down and with just ten minutes on the clock the former Crewe man deposed Mark Schwarzer of a straightforward catch and hooked in what the Teeside radio commentator understandably described as a ‘consolation’. Ten minutes on and with injury time imminent that same commentator upgraded the Canaries unlikeliest of comebacks to ‘making things uncomfortable for the Boro’ as Leon McKenzie took full advantage of statuesque defending to nod home a third.

We were now firmly into added on time, a game’s hinterland where magical things can occasionally occur with the right wind behind it, but when all hope was placed onto a late, late free-kick, in the most dangerous of areas, and that free-kick was redirected out the crowd exhausted themselves of belief. It was akin to the sound of twenty five thousand balloons deflating.

They forgot about the resulting corner. Was there even time to take it?

Darren Huckerby wasted no time in floating over a peach and full-back Adam Drury met it sweetly igniting fifty shades of bedlam to erupt in East Anglia.

It wasn’t a win that would pull Norwich out of trouble and set some momentum in place. But at the time, in that moment, it felt far more significant than that.

What happened next?

Despite a late-season revival that took their scrap to the final day the Canaries eventually succumbed to relegation.

Middlesbrough finished a very respectable seventh, their highest Premier League placing and one that guaranteed them European football. The following year they reached the UEFA Cup final.

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