Two minutes into the four allocated for added time, the assistant referee made his desperate dash across the pitch for safety. So eager were Derby’s supporters to herald their return to the Championship there was no option but to call a premature halt to proceedings. This pitch invasion was not for preventing.
Derby are back. Not yet anywhere near their highest heights; the quest for Premier League football remains an ambition for some unspecified point in the future, at the conclusion of what has been a wholesale rebuild of a club that came perilously close to disappearing altogether. But after the extent of their recent plight the unbridled joy of this final-day win over already relegated Carlisle United to seal automatic promotion back to the Championship means a return to where a club like this feels it belongs.
