Guy Butters vividly recalls celebrating Albion's play-off final win.

He remembers a long night out ending up with a monster fry-up at Buddies while still in his ill-fitting club suit.

(“I think they gave me Geoff Pitcher’s. It was a bit small.”).

Earlier that night, Butters and team-mates including Ben Roberts, Kerry Mayo and Adam Hinshelwood danced around the boots and shinpads they were still carrying as they joined glowstick-waving ravers on Brighton seafront.

And there was the trip back from Cardiff on a coach that had rather more air conditioning than it should have had.

But there is another, less pleasant, image which even now still forces Butters to shudder on occasion.

It was the moment he could have been the villain of the piece. Season-defining. Career-defining, even.

Albion’s play-off success was built on the rock-solid central defensive pairing of Butters and Danny Cullip.

Bristol City were not given a sniff of goal at the Millennium Stadium, Or maybe there was half a sniff.

Butters said: “I’ve never watched the full game back but I remember at one stage Ben (Roberts) rolls the ball out to me at edge of the box.

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“I looked around and saw Tony Rougier closing me down. I trod on the ball and he half nicked it off me but his touch was a bit heavy and it went out of play.

“Sometimes, even now, I remember that and shudder.

“But I would have blamed Ben for rolling the ball to me!”

The play-off final was a fantastic chance for Albion to show what sort of support they could attract as they campaigned for their new stadium.

Players realised the club were existing on a shoestring.

Butters said: “We knew if we hadn’t gone up, the money side would have meant players going. I was 35. I thought I’d be one of them.

“It was clever how it was handled. Things are leaked to the press and you get the hint you are fighting for your career.

“I’d done a few things but to stay in Cardiff and soak the atmosphere up was a good move.

“I don’t know if Mark (McGhee) picked the route to go through the fans to the stadium.

“But it was all red and white as we went through Cardiff and you’re thinking, ‘It’s all Bristol City fans’.

“Then you turn the corner and see this big sea of blue and white as you drive up to the stadium and it’s just a huge adrenaline rush. The hairs on your arms stand up.”

Butters had advised younger players to conserve energy throughout the build-up to the game, knowing the physical and mental toll the occasion would take.

He said: “I looked around the coach on the way home and Virgs (Adam Virgo) was asleep, other boys were asleep.

“Me, Kez (Mayo), Harty (Gary Hart), Ben, Hinsh were still going at the back of the bus. But it was roasting so I asked Kez to open the skylight.

“He only pushed the first bit up and we said you had to really push so he went for it again and it came clean off!

“We looked behind us and cars were going everywhere!”