How Newport County came back from the dead and eventually regained place in Football League "It became inevitable," Hando says. There were promises after promises. I can remember when the vice-president's lounge was closed and on the door it said "closed for refurbishment." In fact, the bailiffs had come in and taken all the furniture and fittings. On April Fool's Day the club's assets went under the hammer. There was an auction which raised £12,000. It was absolutely ridiculous. Hardly enough to pay the auctioneer and certainly not the administrator. The trophies, 70 years of history, just went. And that was it: club football in Newport was gone. Or at least it would have been, had Hando and some 400 supporters not decided to start from scratch. There was a pot of cash in a support fund which Hando headed up. A vote was called to decide what to do with the money: return it to those who paid in, give it away or set up a new club and try to get back to the Football League. The latter won by a large majority. Things did not start well. The council insisted the new club was just the old one in disguise and barred them from playing at their ground. So they joined the Hellenic League and played home games in the Gloucestershire town of Moreton-in-Marsh, 85 miles away. It was a long struggle, according to Hando, now 75 and president of the club. But after more than two decades of graft and four promotions - including the Blue Square Bet Premier play-off victory in May - Newport are finally back in the Football League. John Hill, 61, helped set up the reformed club in 1989 and was one of those there in tears at the final whistle at Wembley. "We lost our football club," he says. That's quite a difficult thing. Without being over dramatic, it was a bereavement. It was a shattering thing for the fans and the town itself. To see adults crying both male and female..." he adds, trailing off. For me personally it hasn't sunk in yet. It won't until Saturday. For Hando, there was the "warm satisfaction" of a job well done and the memory of those among the 400 founding fans who were not there to see the project reach completion. I took with me an old wooden rattle that belonged to a chap called Frank Batterham who use to annoy everyone by rattling it at our home games. Well I took it to Wembley and I rattled it in the Royal Box in memory of Frank Batterham and all the supporters who I hope were looking down and cheering. In February 1989 there were only 400 diehards left. When Newport play Accrington on Saturday Hando expects at least 4,000. The question now is how high Newport can go. Certainly one league up and maybe more, Hando says, before adding: "If we all work together there's nothing we can't achieve." After the club's last 25 years, few would disagree.