It looks too good to be true, a fantasist’s fraud on the earthy realism of 21st-century football. Histon has a proper village green, with duck pond and well. Thatched cottages abound and an ancient delivery bike leans against the window of the traditional butcher’s shop as if this was a set for Miss Marple rather than the home of the latest FA Cup giant killers.

Swindon Town and Leeds United have already been beaten in this speck on the map of Cambridgeshire, with its population of barely 4,000. Tomorrow, the Swansea City coach will pull off the A14 trunk road and into The Glass World Stadium, a grand title for a ground that was, until this season, open on three sides.

This week, Forest Green Rovers, based in a Gloucestershire village of similar size, have been debunking the romance of the Cup and proclaiming their professionalism. Gratifyingly, Histon, 20 places higher in the Blue Square Premier, rejoice in the improbability of their situation.

Indeed, for a club in the third round of the Cup and challenging for promotion to the Football League, Histon remain unfeasibly Corinthian. Most of their players — including a postman, a lorry driver, a roofer and a male model — have other jobs. So does Steve Fallon, the manager, and John Beck, his coach.

“What’s more, not one of the staff works here full-time,” Gareth Baldwin, the chairman, said. “Every other club at our level has people paid to sit in certain positions. We’re run by 76 volunteers.”

Baldwin had spent a frosty day in the tiny match office. His wife, Lisa, the club secretary, was busy with paperwork and, in a typical Histon collaboration, Mick Collis, the caretaker, helped Carol, his wife, to sell the rest of the Cup tickets. “That’s the way it works here,” Gareth Baldwin said. “It’s all about families, top to bottom. The manager’s wife deals with the media and John Beck’s wife runs the boardroom.”

His days in the London music business have not only left Baldwin, 40, with spiky hair and a Cockney accent, but also a grasp of one-liners. “We’re not a revolution, we’re an evolution,” he said. “We’re small, not quite perfectly formed, but very user-friendly.”

Asked to name the prompt for extraordinary on-field success that has brought five promotions in 12 seasons, Baldwin said simply: “Not quitting.” And then he told how the club were close to folding when he was enticed along as an unwitting saviour 17 years ago.

“It was going to the wall, no question,” he said. “There was a huge amount of debt and a lot of malpractice had gone on. I was mugged, really. I knew nothing of how bad things were, but, once I’d agreed to help, I wasn’t going to walk away. It’s on record that I’ve put in half a million of my own money, but I’m not alone in that.

“To be where we are is the stuff of fairytales. We’re ready for league football here, our ground is up to standard. All we lack is a sustainable fan-base, but we’ll get there. Ten years ago, we didn’t get 100 people to home games. Now we average 1,160.”

For Baldwin, whose day job is in corporate hospitality, a conspicuous triumph has been re-engaging the community. “There was a lot of suspicion after the damage done in the past, but we now have a supportive parish council and the village people have taken us to their hearts,” he said. “There were grown men crying here when we beat Leeds.”

A stroll through the lanes testifies to the passion. The butcher has dressed a man-size Father Christmas model in Histon kit and put him alongside the bike. The baker is selling “Gingerbread Dan” cakes based on Danny Wright, the match-winner in the 1-0 win over Swindon in the first round. And Matt Langston, who got the winner against Leeds in the second round before returning to delivering letters, is the subject of “Postman Matt” pictures.