Palace dominated the first halfs proceedings and had enough chances to take a lead in the second leg of this play-off clash however their chances were not taken and Sunderland took full advantage.
First Kevin Kyle struck on 42 minutes for Mick McCarthy's side and then former Ipswich striker Marcus Stewart with a looping header on 45 minutes scored their seconded meaning that in the space of 3 minutes Sunderland had come from one goal behind to lead by one goal totally agains the run of play.
When Julian Gray was sent off with just four minutes of the match remaining, Palace looked dead and buried and it looked like Mick McCarthy's men would be heading to Cardiff.
However, as so often happens in play-off games, there was to be a late, late goal. In the second minute of injury time Darren Powell scored his first goal of the season for Palace with a header to take things into extra time to shellshock Sunderland.
Extra time produced few chances for either side, and despite urges from both managers for their teams to push up and look for the winner, neither defence was breached and the match was to be decided by the lottery of a penalty shoot-out.
First up for the penalties was John Oster for Sunderland who were given the distinct advantage of having the penalties taken at their own end, Oster could only hit the post and with Andy Johnson scoring Palace's first penalty, the pressure was on Sunderland.
The next seven penalties were scored to bring the scores to 4-4 with Shaun Derry just needing to score his penalty for Palace to send them through to the play-off final, his penalty high to the middle of the goal was saved by Mart Poom in the Sunderland goal, and the match entered sudden death.
A poor sidefooted penalty from McAteer was saved by Vaasen before Wayne Routledge blew the chance to send Palace through by hitting a penalty that was a carbon copy of Shaun Derry's, with again Mart Poom saving in exactly the same fashion.
Jeff Whitley was next up for Sunderland, but much to manager Mick McCarthy's fury, the former Manchester City player tried to be too clever with his spot kick, and his penalty was easily saved by Nico Vassen in the Palace goal.
Michael Hughes then dispatched his powerful effort into the right hand corner of Poom's goal, and although Poom got a hand to it, he was never going to be able to keep it out of the net, such was the sheer quality of the strike.
Palace qualify for the Play-Off Final on penalties, and Town will be hoping that they also will be appearing at Cardiff, but the process of getting there is a little easier on the heart than Dowie's Palace.