After 103 years, Hull City have at last reached the top division, and the goal that won the playoff final was so well-worked and spectacular it deserved to win a game as vital as this. Bristol City’s manager Gary Johnson admitted that “it was not the best of games”, but it was surely a goal to rank with the best at Wembley, even if 39-year-old Dean Windass, who scored it with a fine volley, might have been more closely marked.

In front of a 86,703 crowd exuberant throughout in the sunshine, Hull scored their priceless goal on 38 minutes. As Johnson lamented: “It was a breakaway. That’s how they play, with eight men behind the ball and you’ve got to break them down and today, we couldn’t break them down. And when we did, we didn’t take the opportunity.”

Nicky Barmby, used wide on the left yesterday, began the decisive move. Born in Hull, he graced the attacks of teams such as Tottenham Hotspur and Middlesbrough and England before returning to his home town. It was Barmby, making what was arguably his only major contribution to hostilities, but a massive one it was, who got away with speed and skill, eventually and accurately finding the excellent Fraizer Campbell on the left. Campbell coolly evaded City’s challenging defenders and, right-footed, lobbed a perfectly-judged ball to Windass, standing, strangely free, on the very edge of the penalty box. With an instant and superb right-footed shot, Windass blasted the ball high away from Adriano Basso in the Bristol goal.

Grey hair tightly cropped, Windass throughout played with economy, intelligence and skill, always ready to compete for the ball in the air. “With Dean Windass’s attitude,” said Phil Brown, his manager, “It would be foolish or remiss of me to dismiss him after what he’s been this season. But our need is to survive in the Premiership this year and if I feel Dean Windass can help us do that, then I’ll keep him.”

Did he feel that? he was asked. “Yes,” he replied.

He paid tribute to his team’s resilience in the extreme heat. “I have a ready-made model in place in that in my career,” he said, “and that’s Bolton Wanderers. The model is out there. There’s the model that we’ll be copying.”

He was also asked whether he thought Hull could hang on to their gifted young striker, Campbell. The word has been that Manchester United, from whom he is on loan, will want him back. Brown replied that ideally it would want to keep Campbell. Indeed, watching yesterday, you would believe that Campbell’s presence would be absolutely essential to Hull’s survival in the Premier League. As Brown said, they had to talk to Manchester United. “If that business is successful, he’ll be a Hull City player and if not he’ll be a Manchester United player.”

The world at large, of course, wants to play for Manchester United, but as someone remarked to Brown, the danger was that if Campbell did go to Old Trafford, he would find himself sitting on the bench, whereas if he stayed with Hull he would obviously play regular Premier League football. “You’ll have to ask him,” Brown said.

Brown admitted that Bristol City had forced the pace in the second half. The truth, however, was that with all their territorial advantage, they seldom made concrete chances.

Few, in fact, as promising as the one they created after only four minutes of the game when the powerful Dele Adebole who tends to start well but fade in the second half, forced his way through under pressure but found the angle from the right too tight to give Boaz Myhill the Bristol keeper excessive trouble.

At the other end, Adriano Basso timed his dash from the penalty box well to kick the ball away from Campbell.

Chances were sporadic. Four minutes after Basso’s charge, Hull’s Samuel Ricketts overlapped speedily on the right, preceding City’s Michael McIndoe, but when he did get in a shot, once again, there was little trouble for goalkeeper Basso.

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