Cooper completes Forest's resurrection as own goal seals top-flight promotion

That sense will only have been amplified by the second incident that followed soon afterwards when O'Brien was clumsily bundled over from behind by Max Lowe.

- TOM KERSHAW

Huddersfield Town -  0

Nottingham Forest Colwill, 43 (og) - 1

AT WEMBLEY STADIUM

Steve Cooper's remarkable nine-month reinvention of Nottingham Forest gave birth to a belated new era at Wembley yesterday. After 23 years of chaos, yearning and heartbreak, and a season in which Forest were rock bottom of the Championship in September, their Premier League resurrection was rendered complete as Levi Colwill's cruel own goal settled a tense and scrappy play-off final against Huddersfield.

Carlos Corberan will have every right to feel aggrieved, having seen two credible penalty appeals waved away in a frenzied second half, but fate - and Jon Moss refused to budge. They are the fine margins worth hundreds of millions in this unique fixture that wagers all the travails of the season on a knife-edge. On this occasion, no matter how Huddersfield tried to wrestle an equaliser, the game seemed destined to tilt in Forest's favour.

There was ecstasy at last for their players at full-time. Nottingham locals Joe Worrall and Ryan Yates were raised in the shadow of the club's decline. Others, like Brennan Johnson and Djed Spence, who weren't even born when Forest were last in the Premier League, inherited the burden of that history. But the fans in the stadium knew that pain intimately and immense credit must go to Cooper, twice a loser in the play-offs with Swansea himself, for how he has exorcised those demons against all odds. Forest's return to the top-flight is a romantic addition long overdue, but that will be no consolation to a Huddersfield squad left splayed across the turf in despair, left to rue what might have been.