I’D HAD a cartilage operation in January and was struggling for fitness before the game.

I was flitting in and out of the team right at the death of the season and ended up being a sub in the final because my knee was causing me a few problems.

It was no surprise to me that I didn’t start but ultimately it didn’t matter because it wasn’t about me, it was about the team. As long as we won the game we got the prize I had chased all season.

It was an amazing season but the game at Wembley summed up the Swindon Town philosophy.

We played the ‘beautiful game’ and we entertained. To win the play-off final that way was fitting for the way we played football that season.

We played so well and when Shaun Taylor scored to make it 3-0 you think game over. Any game when you are 3-0 up you don’t expect to lose it.

When they drew back to 3-3 it was a bit of a shock but I was still very confident that we were more than good enough to win it. We were actually good enough to win the title that season.

I felt that on any given day we were more than capable of beating any team, so I was never concerned that we wouldn’t win.

I came on just after Paul Bodin slotted away the penalty and the message was simple - keep it tight, just hang on.

At the end of any game when there are two or three minutes to go and you are leading by one goal it’s the most stressful period of the whole game.

Every time the ball is in your half you’re stressed, nervous and thinking ‘please don’t let them score’.

But when it’s for a place in the Premier League for the first time in your history those two minutes feel like two weeks.

When people say ‘I was tired’ they were because they’d played two weeks’ football in the last two minutes.

It is the most nerve-wracked I’ve ever felt because you just don’t want to be the one to make a mistake that costs a goal.

When that final whistle went it was absolute elation, there’s no better feeling.