An hour before kick off, Wembley was a stadium of two halves. To a West Country man, the red half of Wembley Stadium bellowed out the local anthem Drink Up Thy Zider with its rather threatening prediction that “we’ll knock the milkmaids over and roll ’em in the clover”. Meanwhile, the amber half simply looked on in bemused silence, too mystified to even raise a jeer.

In truth, they probably had more to think about. In 103 far from glorious years Hull City had never been this close to feasting at the top table. And, unlike Bristol City, they had never graced new or old Wembley. On Wembley way, shark-eye touts were out numbered by wide-eyed sons and daughters of Hessle, of Withernsea and of North Ferriby wearing a bewildering variety of tiger-related City kits, from those worn by George Maddison 430 times before World War II and Andy Davidson for 520 games after it; the still-eulogised strikers Chris Chilton and Ken Wagstaff and even the more motley crew who, under the already but unfairly forgotten Warren Joyce, escaped from non-league football and likely extinction in 1999. This was what the big time could be like for Phil Brown‘s mix of doughty worker and precocious talents. If, if, if...

Bristol City had their own ghosts to honour, their own demons to exorcise and their own dreams to chase. Their fans came with their flags and banners, their more consistent kit and their own joyous sense of wonder, looking for the right to face Chelsea and Manchester United, just a year after hosting Cheltenham and Millwall.

As if establishing a template for those who would fly too close to the sun, they boomed for four seasons from 1976 when they plied their trade in the old first division. After three relegations in four seasons, had the so called Ashton Gate Eight, their highest paid players, not agreed to tear up their contracts and walk away, the club would surely have folded.

The noise when the teams emerged was a cathartic roar borne of those who could see the promised land, but knew only half of them could actually make it.

The players understood his too, even though the Premiership may prove to be a step too far for some of the victors.

Dean Windass, aged 39 going on 16, the niggly Stakhanovite whom the head but not the heart says age would surely wither in the Premiership and Nicky Barmby, whose very move to his hometown club in 2004 signified an acceptance that his Premiership pomp had passed.

Nobody had told the pair the fat lady may be singing especially for them. As Hull struggled in the early stages, Barmby was the font of all their creativity a the man who wrested control of the midfield his team’s way and so spent that when he hobbled off after 67 minutes, he could barely put one foot in front of the other.

Windass was a tubby outlet snapping at the heels of Bristol’s centre halfs, Liam Fontaine and Louis Carey. So youthful of thought he had dyed his hair blond for the occasion, the tattooed, tubby former labourer harkens to bygone era, one where footballers began and finished their career with their local team - albeit in Windass’s case with spells at six other clubs in between - and where victories are celebrated with a pint at the local pub with the wife rather than a cocktail in a club with a model. When his magnificently struck (if poorly defended) winner came, it was if he was reminding us that he has always had exemplary technique as well as jagged elbows.

He left us after 70 minutes, not knowing for sure that his goal had taken Hull up. The only thing louder than his own fans’ encomium were the whistles from the Bristol contingent. Job, as they say, done.

Windass’s goal was created by Frazier Campbell’s wizardry in jiggling around Bristol’s defence and sublime intelligence in picking out his partner. His loan from Manchester United ends tomorrow. Such was his movement, guile and power that there seems little chance Sir Alex Ferguson will allow the move to be made permanent.

After that, Bristol had no option but to fling everything at Hull although their front two of Dele Adebola and Lee Trundle were never cute enough to outwit Hull’s homunculus defenders.

Appositely their fans were in the shade, Hull’s in the sun, but the volume and the mutual fear factor grew with each passing minute, each repulsed sortee and each ominous Hull break. When they did get a shot on goal after 86 minutes, Michael Turner, with the sort of block that would have saved Stalingrad from the Nazis, broke 40,000 red shirted hearts.

At last, after those 103 years, it was Hull City's day. And at the final whistle, who was first onto the pitch, charging faster than he's charged in a decade towards his adoring crowd? The chant was long, loud and simple: “Deano, Deano, Deano”.

Theyre probably still singing it this morning on the banks of the Humber.