Cue utter mayhem on the pitch. The Great Wolves Comeback was complete. 

As Reid, now 39, tells FTBL, it was a day he’ll never forget.

“It was 19 years ago but I can remember it very clearly," he says. “It was my first-ever Grand Final experience. Three-nil down at half-time and we probably didn’t deserve it.

“But I remember our coach Nick Theodorakopoulos. He was so calm. Most coaches would’ve ranted and raved, but not him.

"Calm, assured and confident, he told us, ‘We’ve scored goals all season. We’ve got a team that can score goals And we can do it again here in the second half. If they can score three, we can score three’.

“It’s nice when a coach shows that much faith in a team.

“And I never thought we were out of the game. Even at half time.”

Two changes were made at half-time.

Reid was going to be taken off, but the Wolves assistant coach convinced Theodorakopoulos to keep on the youngster.

Smart move.

“I got put through by I think Dino Mennillo," Reid recalls of his fabulous equaliser. "Then taking the first touch towards the goal I just thought, ‘Get this on target’.

“And since that goal, keepers have told me where I put it was exactly the position where keepers don’t like it - low down and right next to them."

Shirt off, a yellow card for the skinny midfielder didn’t matter - the Wolves were back in it as Glory’s superstars were beginning to feel the strain.

Matt Horsley got the Wolves back into the contest after the break

Wolves had some good chances in extra time but it remained 3-3.

The pressure was now firmly on the hosts to not let this slip.

Onto one of the most epic penalty shootouts. And Reid was once again integral for the red shirts from the south coast of NSW.

“Every player in the first five pens on each side scored. So it was 5-5," he recalls. “We missed then they missed, and suddenly each team was missing their pens.

“But it got to 6-6. Our keeper Les Pogliacomi had already taken a pen, with three of us left on the halfway line.

“Robbie Stanton, George Souris and me - a player who’d never taken a penalty for Wollongong.

“I looked at George and Robbie - we used to travel down to Sydney together to training in Wollongong - and I thought, ‘they’re defenders, I’m a midfielder, I have to go now.

“I went, picked the spot, keeper dived the wrong way, scored and then they missed.

“And that was it, we won 7-6."

He adds: “People still say it was the best grand final ever.

“Who knows but for the drama and a team like Wollongong who had never ever pushed for a title, to come from nowhere to win like that, I’ll never forget it.

"It was the biggest crowd I’d played in front of till that time in my career.

“These are the moments you play football for."

Around 300 Wolves fans celebrated with their team at a rapidly emptying Subi, as fans filed out in disbelief.

The Wolves team and staff celebrated back at the team hotel, then went to the airport for the red-eye flight back to Sydney (where an exhausted Chipperfield famously used the trophy as a pillow to sleep on).

A flight delay meant the team didn’t arrive back till around 8 am.

And the coach ride to Wollongong where the fans were waiting from the Bulli Pass onwards, was the stuff of fairytales for the south coast. 

Les Pogliacomi was huge for Wolves in the shootout

But Reid wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

He left the airport, went straight home to continue studying for his uni exams.

“I wasn’t part of the celebrations in Wollongong when ‘Chippers’ drove the team bus!” he recalls. (Chipperfield, so the story goes, was a bus driver before his professional football career). 

So, how did Reid’s exam go?

He smashed it, earning average distinctions.

But he has yet to move into the medical imaging game. Radiology’s loss is football’s gain. Football remains in Reid’s DNA.

He went on to play another season for Wolves before going to England to play for Bradford City and Brighton, and he was briefly a fringe Socceroo.

Reid later returned to play A-League with Adelaide and Sydney FC. He is currently the U-10s SAP team coach at Rockdale.

But many still remember him for that day in Perth.

On Sunday, Reid will be at Star Casino with other Sydney FC staff and fans to see his Sky Blues pull off what he believes will be a win.

A regulation win, though.

“A 2-1 win in regular time to Sydney," he tips. 

“But I want it to be a really dull game, though, so ours remains the best Grand Final!”