Champions
Hard-boiled Holgate End veterans, Chicken Run cynics, Bob End Boys, Ayresome Angels, Riverside Revolutionaries, Roary Club ra-ras, all the emotionally-scarred survivors of too many Wembley heartbreaks... histroy has now been made.
After 128 fruitless years of industry and endeavour without a sniff of silver, after a century of painful near-misses, after frustrating empty generations of unrewarded dedication, passion and faith from the stands... glory finally arrived.
After countless kicks in the teeth - not just the Wembley defeats but also missed sitters against Orient and Wolves, the outbreak of war in Europe with Boro top of the table (twice!), three semi-final failures in Manchester, the yo-yo years, liquidation, the three points - Boro fans finally get a jubilant payback for years of what seemed a perverse faith in a lost cause.
Boro were, before yesterday, no matter how you dress it up, were to the rest of Planet Football a by-word for underachieving mediocrity.
Today they are the club who have won something.
On Saturday, as with for all the 128 previous years, 'boro was an also-ran. A provincial upstart playing well above their station. A town with a population of 120,000 giving it welly against the big boys.
We may cherish the 1975 Anglo-Scottish Cup but, let's be honest, no-one outside Teesside remembers that Mickey Mouse competition and, when reminded of it, it sounds like a pathetic plea for a patronising pat on the head.
Victory in Cardiff transforms everything.
The spectacular and ambitious project to rebuild and rebrand the club and place Boro on the top table took massive strides forward in one winning 90 minutes.
And the huge personal investment made by Steve Gibson in his vision of a successful Boro fit to challenge the established elite for further silverware was deservedly rewarded.
A first trophy for Teesside draws an emphatic line under a century of unremitting mediocrity.
The barren past is now over and a bright new positive future in which anything is possible begins.
Victory makes people sit up and take notice, makes people reassess our turbulent decade, reinvigorates a flagging fan base and sends passions to boiling point once more.
Victory is the platform to build a genuine sustained success our long suffering Holgate ancestors could never even contemplate.
Victory catapults Boro into Europe for the first time ever and along with the mouthwatering prospect of UEFA Cup glory nights at the Riverside come massive financial and political rewards.
As well as Carling Cup prize money, gate income from UEFA Cup games and the TV deals, Europe brings real transfer market muscle.
Boro can now cement the likes of Mendi, Zendi, Millsy and Gate into the team and build for a brighter immediate future plus attract quality players to take the next step forward.
Boro winning at Cardiff gives Mac an ace to play in this summer's transfer talks.
Just as significantly, victory will have a massive cathartic effect on the crowd and force Boro fans to make a quantum leap forward.
Cup glory - and Europe - will force the faithful to quickly psychologically and emotionally rewire themselves ready to cope with success.
It will close a long dark chapter in our history when a grumbling under-current of defeatism held sway, when the fatalistic and pessimistic Chicken Runner in us all expected the club to fall short in the big games, anticipated defeat and braced themselves for the inevitable with an armour of cynicism and 'typical Boro' gallows humour.
A Boro win means unbridled optimism is the new black.
Victory is a fitting end of Boro's gruelling journey from the brink of oblivion to the verge of a Brave New World.
When the old club went under in 1986 it had precisely nothing to show for a wasted century and generations of Teesside fans were conditioned to believe that was the natural state of affairs.
Since then, despite the odd blip, we have marched forward to a stage where we can proudly say Boro are Premiership fixtures, have been to four Wembley finals, including the ZDS, and lost out in two more semi-finals.
Older fans may believe that this is our Golden Age now and that it is precarious and is yet to yield the silverware.
But the fresh faced youngsters who made the journey to Cardiff have grown up thinking that finals are the norm.
Victory ushers in a new reality where even the hardest bitten cynic is forced to accept that that is true.
It elevates expectations and experience of Boro fans to new heights - and opens up a mind-blowing era when all our long cherished dreams of glory were actually fulfilled.
Well done Boro.
Hard-boiled Holgate End veterans, Chicken Run cynics, Bob End Boys, Ayresome Angels, Riverside Revolutionaries, Roary Club ra-ras, all the emotionally-scarred survivors of too many Wembley heartbreaks... histroy has now been made.
After 128 fruitless years of industry and endeavour without a sniff of silver, after a century of painful near-misses, after frustrating empty generations of unrewarded dedication, passion and faith from the stands... glory finally arrived.
After countless kicks in the teeth - not just the Wembley defeats but also missed sitters against Orient and Wolves, the outbreak of war in Europe with Boro top of the table (twice!), three semi-final failures in Manchester, the yo-yo years, liquidation, the three points - Boro fans finally get a jubilant payback for years of what seemed a perverse faith in a lost cause.
Boro were, before yesterday, no matter how you dress it up, were to the rest of Planet Football a by-word for underachieving mediocrity.
Today they are the club who have won something.
On Saturday, as with for all the 128 previous years, 'boro was an also-ran. A provincial upstart playing well above their station. A town with a population of 120,000 giving it welly against the big boys.
We may cherish the 1975 Anglo-Scottish Cup but, let's be honest, no-one outside Teesside remembers that Mickey Mouse competition and, when reminded of it, it sounds like a pathetic plea for a patronising pat on the head.
Victory in Cardiff transforms everything.
The spectacular and ambitious project to rebuild and rebrand the club and place Boro on the top table took massive strides forward in one winning 90 minutes.
And the huge personal investment made by Steve Gibson in his vision of a successful Boro fit to challenge the established elite for further silverware was deservedly rewarded.
A first trophy for Teesside draws an emphatic line under a century of unremitting mediocrity.
The barren past is now over and a bright new positive future in which anything is possible begins.
Victory makes people sit up and take notice, makes people reassess our turbulent decade, reinvigorates a flagging fan base and sends passions to boiling point once more.
Victory is the platform to build a genuine sustained success our long suffering Holgate ancestors could never even contemplate.
Victory catapults Boro into Europe for the first time ever and along with the mouthwatering prospect of UEFA Cup glory nights at the Riverside come massive financial and political rewards.
As well as Carling Cup prize money, gate income from UEFA Cup games and the TV deals, Europe brings real transfer market muscle.
Boro can now cement the likes of Mendi, Zendi, Millsy and Gate into the team and build for a brighter immediate future plus attract quality players to take the next step forward.
Boro winning at Cardiff gives Mac an ace to play in this summer's transfer talks.
Just as significantly, victory will have a massive cathartic effect on the crowd and force Boro fans to make a quantum leap forward.
Cup glory - and Europe - will force the faithful to quickly psychologically and emotionally rewire themselves ready to cope with success.
It will close a long dark chapter in our history when a grumbling under-current of defeatism held sway, when the fatalistic and pessimistic Chicken Runner in us all expected the club to fall short in the big games, anticipated defeat and braced themselves for the inevitable with an armour of cynicism and 'typical Boro' gallows humour.
A Boro win means unbridled optimism is the new black.
Victory is a fitting end of Boro's gruelling journey from the brink of oblivion to the verge of a Brave New World.
When the old club went under in 1986 it had precisely nothing to show for a wasted century and generations of Teesside fans were conditioned to believe that was the natural state of affairs.
Since then, despite the odd blip, we have marched forward to a stage where we can proudly say Boro are Premiership fixtures, have been to four Wembley finals, including the ZDS, and lost out in two more semi-finals.
Older fans may believe that this is our Golden Age now and that it is precarious and is yet to yield the silverware.
But the fresh faced youngsters who made the journey to Cardiff have grown up thinking that finals are the norm.
Victory ushers in a new reality where even the hardest bitten cynic is forced to accept that that is true.
It elevates expectations and experience of Boro fans to new heights - and opens up a mind-blowing era when all our long cherished dreams of glory were actually fulfilled.
Well done Boro.
