THEY couldn't have a more apt motto - the Pride of Hampshire.

Everyone connected with Winchester City Football Club was waking up today with a huge sense of pride in a unique achievement. They are the first club from the county to lift one of the most prized trophies in football.

And many were waking up nursing a huge hangover as they partied last night to hail the win.

A celebration erupted at the Denplan Ground at Abbotts Barton when the fans and players returned from Birmingham. About 3,000 fans had re-created the club colours of red and black on the terraces of St Andrews in Birmingham. They upstaged and outsang the rival fans from AFC Sudbury in the crowd of 5,080.

Today Terry Bone, the chairman of the supporters' club, summed up the scale of the achievement for a club that was close to dying only a few years ago.

Terry said: "It has been a fantastic achievement in such a short space of time. From where we were only five years ago - we were down and ready to be closed - to what happened yesterday is a fairy tale.

"There were only three of us controlling the whole football team, from making the tea, washing the shirts and preparing the ground. So yesterday was real Roy of the Rovers stuff. It shows that if you dream in football, dreams can come true."

He called on the fans who travelled to Birmingham yesterday to make the shorter and perhaps more mundane trip to matches at Winchester.

"You saw what we can do. It would be brilliant if we could get ten per cent of those fans to come to the City ground regularly."