The scarcely credible becomes a reality as the Tiger Nation sweeps into Wembley and leaves with a seat in the Premier League high table.  And who scored the goal?  Well of course, the returning hero Dean Windass, a sumptuous volley that was enough to hold off a lively Bristol City side.

Report by Steve Weatherill.

The auld fella making steady progress up Wembley Way, stout beechwood walking stick in hand, sporting flannel trousers and a slightly mangy but comfortably relaxed tweed jacket. Knitted tie worn under a thick amber and black scarf.

He's never seen City at Wembley.

The face-painted child, slightly nervous at the explosions of colour and exuberance, awed by the sheer size and smell of the torrent of humanity, but gazing up in astonishment at the dark glass of the stadium behind which strolls the corporate excess contemptuously badged by New Labour as its core constituency.

She's never seen City at Wembley.

The lairy forty-somethings, my o my they've seen better days in their gutstraining replica shirts, 'amusingly' ironic chosen t-shirts, spewing forth just-the-right-side of drunk conversational gobbets concerning transport planning, obscure Northamptonshire fingerspinners and women they'd like to but won't.

They've never seen City at Wembley.

The familiar never-miss-a-game regular, resplendent astride his tiger-upholstered mobility scooter, incorrigible smile and undimmable optimism holding up sturdily under questioning from a posse of surrounding police officers. 'I know it seems strange that I'm trying to sell 137 tickets, but really no, I'm not a tout, I just got a bit carried away when they went on sale and bought up a few extra in case anything went wrong with the one the club promised me. Ocifer'.

He's never seen City at Wembley.

They all have now.

They've all seen City at Wembley.

They still haven't seen City lose at Wembley, mind. Maybe they never will.

Yesterday was the greatest day our club has ever experienced. Whatever happens from the middle of next August - and, gentle reader, do be warned, we may lose a few - we will spend every single second of season 2008/2009 in a higher League position than we have occupied for the entirety of the last largely inglorious 104 years. It has been a marvellous season, from the early sunblessed pleasures of the League Cup, through an inconsistent Autumn and an alarmingly wintry beginning to December, before the steady improvement over Christmas and into the New Year catapulted us into the thrilling spell of devastating football which has seen us climb irresistibly up the table over the last three months, but had we lost yesterday it would still have been impossible - and foolishly wrong - to deny that we had set up a goldenly amber, feasibly never-to-be-repeated opportunity ... and squandered it.

But we didn't squander it. We converted it.

We converted it with glee, with determination, with sporadic elegance and (of course - this is, after all Hull City) with extended finger-chewing horror.

We took our chance. And East Yorkshire boasts representatives in the highest tier of English football.

Promotion-winning manager Phil Brown ... I like the sound of that, and I shall say it again ... Promotion-winning manager Phil Brown selected a familiar 4-4-2:

Myhill
Ricketts Turner Brown Dawson
Garcia Ashbee Hughes Barmby
Windass Campbell

Why change the winning formula? It's a big game. But it's a game. And this formation and line-up (more or less) has won us most of our games since late February and the history-changing, momentum-creating, belief-inducing win at The Hawthorns.

The match? Well, you've seen the match haven't you, and you'll probably watch it again, more than once. You don't need me to tell you what happened.

We won, mind. That - as cool but nervy heads remarked pre-match - was and is the important thing.

Blimps! Flames! Fireworks! I didn't sneer. It's a big occasion. It felt like it too.

I was too immersed to have more than the haziest notion whether it was a good game. I suspect it was a not-bad game, though both teams played a little less of the decent passing football of which they are capable than one would have hoped - the sort of football that will be needed next season (and the reason why Stoke will finish last next year).

I couldn't tell you whether we deserved to win either. Probably not, on possession and chances. On that basis I suspect Bristol deserved a punt at extra time redemption. But there was one moment of genuine top-quality in this match. It came from our side. And, in these high-stakes one-off matches, that is not only frequently enough to secure victory it is also frequently a sign that the winners deserved that victory too.

Whatever. We won.

Well, OK, it's a match report, and I'll get wrong off Andy Medcalf if I don't pretend to do a bit of narrative. So Bristol were clearly the better side in the early stages. We don't get much possession, when we do we don't pass the ball with care and, at the back, Wayne Brown looks alarmingly creaky and ill-positioned. Adebola and Trundle are a menacing pair up front for them, though, on the defensive plus side, we possess a very large plus. His name is Michael Turner. As far as I can see, it is nowadays impossible to secure selection for the English international side unless you employ several Press Officers whose job it is to drown out public distaste for your latest preening, lazy and losing international appearance with stories spun in the tabloid press about how you 'love to wear the shirt with pride' and will 'always be there for your country'. Also you have to kiss a ring on your finger a lot, for no apparent reason. Michael Turner does none of this. He defends. Stoutly, unflinchingly, honestly. He is good enough to play international football.

On 18 we are sliced open. Adebola strokes a pass square to Carle, advancing out of midfield, but he fritters an inviting opportunity wide of Myhill's left hand post. A minute later, a corner to us, Turner heads just past the post. On 23 a splendid passing move featuring Hughes Ricketts, Windass, and Ricketts again out wide on the right culminates in a delightful cross which Garcia's head loops on to the roof of the net. Best move of the game, and a sign that the early ascendancy enjoyed by Bristol has now settled down into something approaching equality. We're passing the ball with more ease now.

Barmby almost gets on the end of a pass punted forward, but is narrowly foiled by Basso, and it is now clear that, just as the League table suggests, there is little between the two sides. A moment of genius is required.

A moment, perhaps, of hometown never-to-be-forgotten genius.

Nick Barmby (from Hull) leads a break, dribbling confidently up the middle. He slips a deft pass to Fraizer Campbell (from Yorkshire) who draws one tackle, then another, and eludes both. But Fraizer's close to the dead ball line now and the angle is too tight to consider shooting. So, with astonishing composure, he looks up, beyond the slavering defenders closing him down at speed and with violent intent, takes a touch and then lofts a serenely perfect chip on to the right boot of Dean Windass (from Hull).

The execution is perfect.

Don't flail a boot wildly. The ball will finish up in Row Z. Don't try to hit the ball with maximum velocity. You'll lose control. Hit through the ball, firmly, cleanly, feel it ping off your boot like an imperious straight drive. Use every one of your 39 years of experience and leave Basso's gloves groping fresh Wembley air.

Dean Windass (from Hull) has volleyed the ball just inside the post and it's whistled into the back of the net.

Pause to hold back the tears. Or just let them flow.

A moment to treasure.

Regrettably referee Alan Wiley chose not to blow the final whistle right away and, showing undue rigour and balance, insisted that the match should continue. Not for long though, as an accidental collision resulted in a bad injury to Bradley Orr, a long delay, a stretcher and a substitution.

Half time arrives. Let us stroll down the steps and on to the concourse of Wembley Stadium.

I enjoyed my visit to Wembley, I admit. The exterior of the ground is the disaster it always used to be. There simply is not enough space in NorthWest London to cram in a sports stadium of this magnitude. Wembley Way is cramped and ghastly. Were a small bomb to be set off among the jostling crowd many more people would be killed trampled underfoot than would be shredded by the explosion. There's no room to disperse and it is just not safe. Wembley Park tube station is a national disgrace - though the overland arrangements for travel to Marylebone are conspicuously superior, as indeed they always used to be before reconstruction. Still, past the statue of Jim Baxter and into the ground, and things improve. The interior - of my section anyway (Turnstile B) - was pleasingly roomy, and the ground itself offers the proper feel of a major arena. A bit like the Amsterdam Arena - but bigger. The lower parts are not as steep as they could or should be and for that reason I would rate Wembley as inferior to Cardiff's Millennium Stadium. Most of all, though, I always imagined that our first visit to Wembley would be for the 4th Division PlayOff Final or the Autoglass Final against Rochdale or some trivia like that, and that amid amber and black delirium at finally attaining the grace of the National Stadium I'd be feeling demeaned by the sheer banality of the fixture. It is, after all, not my National Stadium, even though we took most of it back North after victory in 1977. But here we are, Hull City at Wembley in a game that Really Matters. It is truly wonderful. I even enjoyed the singing of the national anthem, though personally I felt it right to belt out my own nation's flowery anthem rather than the plodding call to arms favoured by most on these occasions.

Anyway. Back up the stairs into the sunshine. Second half.

Three times the bell tolled, the cock crowed. Three times Bristol were awarded a ghastly free-kick on the edge of the penalty area, right in front of their own fans. Three times our guts churned, three times we survived the horror of losing our precious lead. On 49, a Hughes hand ball, but the free kick is tentative and easily saved by Myhill. On 54 an award is made harshly against Turner as Adebola steps up the physical pressure, but the effort is blocked at the expense of a corner. Then, on 68, Fagan, on for Barmby, stupidly runs back towards the danger area and witlessly trips an opponent right in front of referee Wiley. Survival again thanks to a firm defensive blockage.

Three moments of blind panic among our support but moments of supreme organisation and resilience among our superb defensive unit. Bristol had started the second half well but after the hour the game has opened up and is much more even. Gaps yawn across the wide field. The man to exploit them is not the visibly tiring but untarnishably heroic Dean Windass. He departs on a wave of gratitude and admiration and takes his place on the sidelines alongside Nicky Barmby, two Hull lads locked together in quiet desperation as their club closes in on triumph yet now unable to influence the outcome.

Folan was the man who'd come on to replace Deano, though personally I'd've left Windass on and subbed Fagan off instead. Fagan had after all, since entering the field as replacement for Barmby, offered up a full four minutes of indolence and incompetence. Frankly I think we'd seen enough. But hey, Mr Brown, he's the manager. He knows, y'know. He's a promotion winning manager after all. A promotion winning manager.

O crikey, it's tense now. On 72 Trundle turns brilliantly deep inside the box, but shoots tamely straight at Myhill. Byfield on, Carle off, they go breathlessly 3-4-3. Wild stuff. 85, Myhill flaps under pressure, Turner rescues with a scarcely believable intervention as Bristol seem certain to equalise. On 86 Adebola heads on to the roof of the net as Myhill scampers backwards in fear. On 88 Ricketts steps up to defend brilliantly as a horribly low dangerous cross is whipped in from their right. We can't get the ball. We're hanging on.

There are four added minutes.

We attack for two of them.

They attack for the remaining two. And then two more. Or did it just seem like that?

Myhill is under intense physical pressure but he plucks the ball out of the air. That's the last play. It's finished.

We are promoted.

Texts start to arrive. From all over the world. This is BIG.

We really are promoted.

I've had a rich and rewarding life, I'm lucky enough to able to admit. Not so much in football though. I mean, I love lots of things about being a Hull City fan, always have, always will. It's just that most of them - well, all of them - have no association with winning important football matches or, even less, caressing silverwear. That we do not do. So among my closest friends and family over the years number supporters of Sunderland, Leeds United, Portsmouth, Glasgow Rangers, Glasgow Celtic, Heart of Midlothian and TSV 1860 Munich. Great clubs all of them, all of them winners of major trophies and earning regular (regular-ish in some cases) recognition as major institutions in our sport. I don't feel inferior as a Hull City fan. Not at all. It's just that when the conversation round the table flows, and talk turns to Cup Finals, European campaigns and monumental derby games in front of 60 odd thousand, I have to be a shade creative when I spin my own compensatory tales of tiger derring-do. I mean, I can manage that, don't you worry - from the foaming beer halls of Munich to the lowroofed howffs of Glasgow I have frequently gripped packed audiences silent and spellbound as I have painted an entrancingly vivid picture of how Damien Delaney squirted a twenty-yard daisycutter past his own goalkeeper at Rushden or of the moment when Craig Lawford surfed the fallen leaves of Gay Meadow to secure us an unlikely and wholly meaningless win over Shrewsbury. It's just that sometimes - just sometimes - I wish that Hull City Football Club would rise above its endearing place as English football's outsider, I wish that just once we'd achieve something truly remarkable, something truly unforgettable, something that will be noticed all over the football world.

Yesterday was that day.

HULL CITY (4-4-2): Myhill; Ricketts, Turner, Brown, Dawson; Garcia, Ashbee, Hughes, Barmby; Campbell, Windass.  Subs: Fagan (for Barmby, 67), Folan (for Windass, 71), Marney (for Campbell, 89), Doyle, Duke.

Goals: Windass 38

Booked: Campbell

Sent Off: None

BRISTOL CITY: Basso, Orr, Carey, Fontaine, McAllister, Noble, Elliott, Carle, McIndoe, Adebola, Trundle.  Subs: Johnson (for Orr, 45), Sproule (for Noble, 63), Byfield (for Carle, 76), Vasko, Weale.

Goals: None

Booked: Sproule

Sent Off: None

REFEREE:   A Wiley

ATTENDANCE: 86,703