The man who scored AFC’s winner in the historic win over the hated enemy hoped he would be rewarded with a day off. Fat chance.

Bayo Akinfenwa is required back in training tomorrow so the squad can prepare to face top-of-the-table Bury on Saturday.

But that was one of only two disappointments on a glorious night when at the third attempt AFC beat the side known to fans as Franchise FC.

Net gain: Akinfenwa scores the winner

The bitter memories of how the original Wimbledon was swallowed up and spat out in Milton Keynes 12 years ago refuses to fade.

But the 3-2 win has gone a long way to fuzzy up two defeats by MK the FA and League Cup, as manager Neal Ardley admitted.

“It means everything to me and I was emotional at the end because it’s such a big deal,” he said.

I don’t think it’s quite as big as the Fleetwood match and staying up because of all the pressure and the months of hard work we had put in, but it’s up there.

Done it! Barry Fuller leads the celebrations

“I am over the moon. I’m proud to lead this team and I wanted to be the person that delivered the first win against them. I’m delighted that I’ve done that.”

Ardley made a bold triple substitution in the second half as his side trailed 2-1, and two of them, Sean Rigg and Akinfenwa fired AFC into then the next round.

“My only disappointment was that we had 3,000 fans at the FA Cup tie, over 1,000 at the League Cup game and less than 200 tonight,” added Ardley.

“Bayo is trying to get two days off, but I’ve told him that he’s in on Thursday.

“We had a plan and the players delivered on it. We talked about it last week. We knew that we would not have the ball for about 65 per cent of the game so we wanted to put out a high energy team to do their jobs and make sure we stayed in the game.

“The plan then was to bring on the substitutes after about 65 minutes and have a good go at it,” he told www.afcwimbledon.co.uk.

As everyone knows, it worked better than even the boss could have expected.