Supporting Rochdale should come with a health warning. For all that football has a wonderful propensity for drama, few clubs have ever packed in the heart-stopping tribulations of their past fortnight. But, after it all, they are a Football League club again. And that is all that matters.

Hopes of returning to the ranks of the country’s top 92 clubs looked to have disintegrated as mere seconds remained for Boreham Wood to cling on for victory in this National League playoff final. Then came Mani Dieseruvwe’s extraordinary 96th-minute equaliser to send the match into extra time that preceded penalties.

Step forward Oliver Whatmuff – a goalkeeper on loan from Manchester City who started this season aged just 17 and ended it as Rochdale’s hero, saving twice to secure a 3-1 shootout triumph a day after he was named in the National League team of the season.

Given what they went through a fortnight earlier, it was almost too much for Rochdale fans to take. It was Dieseruvwe who looked to have rendered this tortuous playoff route irrelevant with a goal in the 95th minute against York City that prompted a pitch invasion of pure exhilaration. Eight minutes later, York memorably hit back to clinch the title, inflicting total devastation.

Many suggested the emotional toll of that last-ditch defeat would be too great to recover from, but this is a club built of resilient stuff. Having played in League One as recently as the 2020/21 campaign, the end of their 102-year Football League stay was almost followed by the club’s total demise, only to narrowly avoid liquidation amid major financial problems. Now solvent again off the pitch, they find themselves back among the relative riches of the Football League. And in what remarkable fashion.

For all the debate around the merits of the 3UP campaign and whether a team finishing on 106 points should be automatically rewarded promotion, they had actually shown little to suggest they were worthy of victory for so much of this Wembley showdown.

Barely 45 seconds had ticked by when Whatmuff was required to produce a brilliant low save to deny Leon Ayinde. Little did he know how important his involvement in this match would prove to be.

Boreham Wood’s opener was created by Abdul Abdulmalik’s wizardry on 22 minutes, working space to whip a fearsome cross that possessed sufficient pace for Matt Rush to guide it into the far corner with his chest from outside the six-yard box.

Rochdale showed greater endeavour in the second half, but that came with greater danger. Rush sidefooted a weak volley straight at the goalkeeper, Abdulmarik jinked round almost the entire Rochdale defence before his shot was blocked, and Ayinde dragged an effort wide.

A Boreham Wood second seemed inevitable and when a corner reached Abdulmarik beyond the far post, he drilled through bodies into the bottom corner.

Then came the drama. A hitherto silent Rochdale following burst into life when a long Whatmuff ball deflected straight into Tyler Smith’s path and the substitute buried his finish from the edge of the penalty area.

With time almost up, and Boreham Wood fans pleading for the referee’s final whistle, Rochdale’s propensity for the spectacular struck again. A lumped ball into the box was met by Dieseruvwe, whose header bounced off James Clarke’s back and into the Boreham Wood net to prompt extra-time.

The additional 30 minutes passed in a stalemate filled with cramp and almost entirely devoid of ambition. Both teams gambled on winning from the penalty spot. After all they had been through, it felt fitting that Rochdale triumphed.