It is 22 years since Mark Ricketts, the proud 37-year-old captain of Boreham Wood, joined the Charlton Athletic academy. He would do the usual jobs – cleaning toilets, tidying away cones and polishing the boots of first-team players – and the dream was always to emulate the club’s star player, Scott Parker.

Ricketts never did make the first-team but, at the twilight of a 16-year Non League career that has taken in Ebbsfleet United, Woking and now Boreham Wood, the fairytale has been written. Ricketts was not just the unlikely scorer here of the winning goal to take Boreham into the FA Cup fifth round for the first time in their history (they had never previously even been in the fourth round) but the sense of a career coming full circle was completed by the sight of a crestfallen Parker in the Bournemouth dugout.

Parker would of course go on to play for England, Chelsea and West Ham United after Charlton but acknowledged that there have been few lower points than this. He showed his class, however, by personally congratulating the Boreham players in what was a champagne-soaked away dressing-room. “I have fond memories of Mark – he’ll enjoy his night – I’m pleased for him,” said Parker.

‘Que sera, sera, we’re going to Wembley’ sang the Boreham fans in ecstatic celebration of perhaps the greatest day in their history. The next stop on their FA Cup run is actually Goodison Park and, with promotion to the Football League still a possibility this season amid a 15-game unbeaten streak, an even more extraordinary shock cannot be completely discounted. Their 36-year-old manager, Luke Garrard, has done every conceivable job during his 15 years at Boreham and, in an emotional press conference, paid tribute to the club chairman Danny Hunter.

“I’ve made a fat man happy,” he said, parroting Hunter’s own description of the moment. Hunter had remortgaged his house and even personally arranged for £100 food deliveries to the staff and players during lockdown. “I adore him – he’s a one man band,” said Garrard. “I’m called his sixth son. I wanted to give him a moment. That’s what dreams are made of.”