Deano ends century of heartbreak... and proves that my college tutor was wrong

A Hull City supporter's view on what reaching the top tier of English football for the first time means to the club's fans

That fresh-faced forward's name was Dean Windass. He was the man that my mates and I pretended to be when we played football in the school playground.

Hull had players who had come from across the country but Windass was a Hull boy just like us. He walked the same streets, once stood on the same terraces and was rapidly earning a reputation as the greatest striker the club had ever seen.

Fan-tastic: The wait is finally over for Hull City supporters

Cash-strapped City had to sell him to Aberdeen in 1995. The years that followed his transfer were miserable. City mostly languished in the lower reaches of what was once Division Four until 2001 when finally they showed signs of escaping the bottom of the pile by reaching the play-offs.

However, the dream of escape ended in heartbreak with semi-final defeat to Leyton Orient. The next day at college, my tutor called me to one side.

"You look upset and I know why," he said. "You'll never see Hull City in a play-off final. They've been useless ever since I came to this city which was before you were born. They always will be. Just accept it. Life's full of disappointments."

I thought of those words repeatedly as I watch my beloved Hull City at Wembley Stadium on Saturday afternoon.

Back in 2001, punters would have been given frighteningly long odds on Windass coming back to Hull and, at the age of 39, playing in a play-off to reach the Barclays Premier League. But he has done exactly that. And he did what my friends and I had pretended to do in the playground 15 years ago, by scoring the Wembley winner to take City up.

With that one sweet strike, 15 years of emotional baggage for me - and 104 years for the club - were cast aside. My tutor told me that 'life's full of disappointments'. How wrong he was. Thanks, Deano.