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At Wembley Stadium

Something truly, truly special happened at Wembley on Sunday afternoon as, in the words of their veteran goalkeeper Tony Roberts, a pub team from Essex reached League One.

Dagenham & Redbridge, , .

The Daggers have . They had an average attendance of 2,088 last season and their most expensive player on Sunday, .

"It is a fairy story," said emotional manager John Still after the match.

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At Wembley

As the old saying goes, .

Millwall's defeat of Swindon in Saturday's League One play-off final was a victory for the power of persistence.

After five play-off defeats for the south London club, during which they won just twice in 13 games, the Lions and their supporters can finally celebrate promotion through the end of season knock-out.

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I often see a football match described as a battle or a fight for survival but in 1969 a tie between Honduras and El Salvador proved to be the catalyst that turned simmering border tension and immigration issues into all-out war.

The two teams met in a play-off that had more at stake than simply a place at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico and each side was subjected to abuse, xenophobia and hatred when playing in the other country.

After losing 3-0 in El Salvador, Honduras coach Mario Griffin wryly observed: "We're awfully lucky that we lost."

El Salvador progressed to the World Cup finals but neither side prospered from , as it has become known, which broke out less than three weeks after Honduras were eliminated.

The war lasted 100 hours and left an estimated 6,000 dead and 12,000 wounded.

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At Wembley Stadium

Romance, reinvention and riches - Blackpool's promotion to the Premier League is a story that has it all.

Or as Blackpool's matchwinner , with a turn of phrase which his manager Ian Holloway would have been proud of, put it: "It feels like we have landed on the moon without a space rocket or a helmet."

Last season Burnley, this year Blackpool - two proud Lancashire clubs who have proved that the mouse can still roar in an age when money is regarded as a pre-requisite for success.

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Whatever happens during Saturday's Championship play-off final, it will finish with a club celebrating elevation to entirely new territory.

Blackpool last played top-flight football in 1971, while Cardiff have not been there since 1961, so an entire generation of Seasiders and Bluebirds has been able to do nothing more than wonder what it feels like to rub shoulders with the elite on a weekly basis.

I fully imagine that the money men at both clubs are salivating at the prospect of promotion after .

But although Blackpool and Cardiff are united by a common desire, there is plenty of evidence to suggest the final will be a game of contrasting styles and personalities.

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At the New Den.

Both Millwall and Swindon tantalisingly occupied the second automatic promotion spot in League One at different moments during .

The as-it-stands table also had Charlton briefly in second, but to reclaim the position in which they had started the day and secure a place in the Championship for next season.

However, the same prize is still on offer for Millwall and Swindon after they came through play-off semi-final ties to set-up an intriguing battle for the final League One promotion spot at Wembley on 29 May.

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At the City Ground

The breathtaking, stunning and historic 90 minutes on the evening of 11 May will, for most people, be .

For Blackpool supporters, they will refer simply to .

The result takes the unfancied and unfashionable Tangerines to the Championship play-off final - and to within 90 minutes of the Premier League.

It is a victory not only for the Lancashire club, who claimed a 6-4 aggregate win, but also for supporters of numerous teams up and down the land who follow a team modest in size and resources but perhaps not in ambition.

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At Elland Road

Saturday was a bad day for as dramatically defeated to end their three-year spell in English football's third tier.

I strongly suspect that many neutrals favour the opposition when watching a Leeds match, and supporters of

For a while it looked as though they would get their wish.

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The battle for the second automatic promotion spot in the third tier of English football is not normally much of a headline grabber, but this year is very different.

On Saturday, will all fight for the right to join Norwich in the Championship next season.

And the equation is simple: .

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Bradford City captain Zesh Rehman was just 11 when he was told in the harshest terms possible that he would not make it as a professional footballer.

Ironically, he was at an open day in Birmingham aimed at encouraging youngsters to play the game when a scout delivered his damning verdict.

According to the said scout, talking in the early 1990s, 'Asians' had the wrong diet to succeed at football, didn't like the British weather and, in any case, much preferred cricket.

"That was the motivational fuel I needed to try to prove this man wrong and to try to open doors for the next generation," Rehman told me. "It became a mission from that day on."

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At Hillsborough.

showed us so much of what is great about football and, regrettably, a little of what is not.

Sheffield Wednesday and send opponents Crystal Palace down instead.

If it wasn't quite a straight shoot-out then it wasn't far off, and one group of supporters was always going to greet the final whistle with the kicked-in-the-stomach sensation that comes when you look up from your newly-relegated players slumping to the turf to see the opposition fans celebrating their team's survival in the stand opposite.

It is always a vivid contrast and Sunday was no exception.

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It might evoke images of , or even , but I'm optimistic that a double decker bus will help the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ tell the story of the forthcoming World Cup in South Africa.

I will be onboard the bus alongside other television, radio and online journalists, whose brief will be to find out what the tournament means to ordinary South Africans and visiting fans alike.

Previously , the bus has a mobile television studio on the top deck, which will allow us to broadcast into highlights programmes and at half-time during live games from a variety of interesting and unusual locations.

The bus will allow the team to broadcast from unusual locations

The bus, which left English shores on Friday, will depart Cape Town on the opening day of the World Cup, 11 June and travel the length and breadth of the country before arriving in Johannesburg for the final one month later.

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