Last season's game at West Bromwich Albion was more important than any other during that history-making campaign. Put simply, it was the game that inspired Hull City into becoming a Premier League club.
It was in February, coming as City were on a good run of favourable results and making a slow but conclusive climb up the Championship table. But these opponents represented the pinnacle of City's ambitions, well-heeled, experienced, easy-on-the-eye distributors of a football who, at the KC a month earlier, had inflicted the Tigers' one solitary defeat of the calendar year thus far in a roaringly splendid 90 minutes of sporting entertainment.
On that evening, City had played as well as they could expect, but the Baggies were hat-throwingly brilliant. They triumphed 3-1, played the Tigers off the park in a cultured and fair manner, and this was the level we needed to aspire to if our Premier League dream was to be realised.
And so it came to pass. At the Hawthorns, both teams had their spells of dominance. Both scored in the first half - City through a stunningly selfish curler from distance by Fraizer Campbell; Albion through Roman Bednar's well-timed run and header - and we steeled ourselves for a second period of make or break proportions. A draw would be spiffing, a win not unthinkable but certainly less predictable, a loss a mere addition to a long list of City failing just when the riches of a higher plain are within grasp.
I remember that second half with a similar measure of recollection as I remember Wembley - almost non-existent. The game was ebb and flow, end to end, exciting and petrifying, enlightening and frustrating. It was a great advert for the Championship, should that division ever feel like it needs to prove itself to the greater exponents of the game than those within England's second tier.
The winning goal came eight minutes from time and we can pinpoint this specific moment as the one which told us that a Premier League place was ours if we fancied it. Caleb Folan drifted wide, collected the ball in not the most dangerous of positions, was allowed to saunter forward and suddenly, he cut inside and stroked a classy, placed shot past the goalkeeper and into the far corner. A deflection was evident in replays but not anywhere enough was the ball's course altered to suggest it was key to finding the net.
That goal was the single most important of Hull City's regular 46-match season. It instigated a citywide belief in its football team that this season was, at last, the one where all the hoodoos, disappointments and tragedies of past efforts would be allowed to rest in peace. The club and the management reacted to this expectation accordingly.
The wider media too peered from behind their Baggies-obsessed tinted bins and noticed us. The coverage of the game, as the match of the day, by ITV's The Championship was laughably angled entirely at the procession of West Bromwich Albion to greatness and the Premier League. The lack of knowledge and respect of the commentator, the estimable John Rawling, of Hull City's players, form and general situation was starkly evident in both his commentary and his post-match interviews.
For all the joy, we lost at fellow promotion rivals Bristol City the following week and defeats against Sheffield United and Ipswich Town in two of the last three matches ruined the automatic promotion dream. West Brom were still the best team in the division but they nearly cocked it up before finally clinching the title, and Stoke City also stuttered and hobbled over the promotion line. We did it the harder - yet considerably more glamorous - way.
This weekend, City return to the Hawthorns, and this time we'll start as favourites. While I've never had a single reason to hold candles towards Stoke (either the club or the city as a whole), the delightful football and off-pitch decorum of West Bromwich Albion last year leads me to wish for their progress at this level at a similar rate to ours - though naturally another late winner against them becomes the main point of focus first. It probably won't be from the benched Folan, but it needs to be from someone, anyone. After all, four successive wins is a handy bit of ballast when it comes to fending off Chelsea and Manchester United over the subsequent seven days.
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