I’M not ashamed to admit I had tears welling up at Rodney Parade last Sunday.

Chances are there will be more tears this Sunday, win or lose at Wembley.

That’s what football can do to you.

Sunday’s Blue Square Bet Promotion Final is more than just a football match for Newport County AFC.

It represents the potential culmination of a 25-year journey.

County is the club that refused to die. Bankrupt and thrown on the sporting scrapheap in 1989, halfway through its first season as a non-league club, there were few who would have predicted a footballing future for Newport.

Yet here we are, just a few days away from a return to the Football League.

One game. 90 minutes. 25 years in the making.

This remarkable season is the work of Justin Edinburgh and his players, ably supported by a board of directors who have had the foresight to push through a groundshare at Rodney Parade and who have backed their manager’s judgement with hard cash.

Credit and praise are due to them for getting County toWembley for the second successive season, with the prize this time a return to the Football League for the first time since 1988. But the real heroes are the people who refused to let football in Newport die.

Top of that list is David Hando, former chairman and now the club’s honorary president.

Without him, there would be no club. There are many others like him. The few hundred who helped form Newport AFC. The hardy souls who stood on the terraces watching an exiled AFC forced to play home matches at Moreton-in- Marsh and Gloucester.

The people who took on the Football Association ofWales in the courts for the right to play in Newport.

People like the late Ray Taylor.

People like Chris Blight and Matt Southall and John Relish.

There are too many of them to mention but they are heroes all.

No disrespect to Wrexham, who deserved to be promoted last season and will provide stern opposition at Wembley, but County’s is the ultimate romantic sporting story.

If County win on Sunday it will be the end of one journey – and the starting-point of another.

I saw my first County match at Somerton Park in 1977. I don’t pretend to have been a die-hard supporter in the years that have followed, largely due to living in different parts of the country, and I have only become a regular again in the last 18 months.

I have huge admiration for the die-hards who have stuck with the club through thick and thin over the last 25 years, and they, more than anyone, deserve a County victory on Sunday.

I can’t wait for Sunday. Tears?

Probably. Joy or sorrow? Time will tell.

Ticket-price gripe

APOLOGIES to non-football fans, but one more point about Newport County AFC’s big game.

The ticket prices for Wembley on Sunday are absolutely outrageous and take no account of the tough economic times we are in.

If the rate of ticket sales continues as it has done in the early part of the week there could be fewer than 25,000 people in a 90,000- seater stadium.

The Football Conference clearly has to maximum its revenue but it would surely make more sense to sell many more tickets at a lower price.

But then again, economics and football have never been particularly comfortable bedfellows.