There have been an astonishing seven hundred and seventy eighty league games played by Cambridge since Dion Dublin scored his famous winner at Wembley in 1990, our only previous success in the play-offs.

That's an awful lot of football, plenty of highs and, unfortunately, even more lows. But, for now, they can be put aside, as can the calculators and abacuses as mathematical certainty can replace projections, possible permutations and preferred results: the play-offs are here, and hopefully so are the good times.

Having occupied a play-off place all season - the only side in the league, incidentally, to have achieved such a feat - stuttering end of season form with poor results against lowly opposition turned out to be a mere blip in an otherwise excellent season.

Most hoped for a season of consolidation on the pitch after the turbulent seasons that had gone before; even the most optimistic thought little of booking a holiday during early May. So it is with a degree of surprise that we find ourselves back in the play-off game, a game that is so maligned by its losers but greeted with unparalleled, unfettered joy by its triumphant winners.

It is a popular football myth that the play-offs are a lottery which favour the team who, through a late season charge, have just edged their way into the reckoning.

While this theory does have some credibility - it is not hard to believe a team on a great run of form might have the psychological edge over a team that's just missed out on automatic promotion - it would seem to have little credence in this season's Blue Square Premier play-offs. Not only have the second placed team not 'just' missed out on automatic promotion owing to Aldershot's supreme performance, but the teams in second to fifth have hardly been in fine form. Indeed, for much of the final two months of the season it looked as though it was preferential to miss the play-offs, such was the run of unpredictable results.

Of course, evidence from previous seasons also displays the truth behind the myth. Although the Conference play-offs were only introduced for the 2002/03 season, there is a telling trend in the five seasons they have taken place. Doncaster Rovers, the inaugural winners, finished the season in the second play-off berth, as did Shrewsbury (2004), Carlisle (2005) and Morecambe (2007); on the only other occasion, Hereford, who finished the league in second place, won promotion. So, in five years, the team finishing fourth or fifth in the Conference have never secured promotion to the Football League.

It is worth drawing from a greater depth of history to further rebut the idea that 'second place never goes up'. Football League play-offs began in 1987 and were changed to their current format in 1989 (before this, the team finishing outside the relegation zone in the league above also took part, as is currently the situation in the Scottish leagues - an interesting idea, but one for another day). Of the 57 winners so far, 24 finished as the first seeds, a dominant 42.1%, with only 19.3% coming 'from behind' to win from the final berth.

But what are statistics worth in football, a game where endeavour and belief are worth as much as trends and history? Where they lean towards Cambridge, it seems they might be worth a lot. Results in a mini-league between the four teams involved in this season's play-offs - Burton, Exeter, Torquay and, of course, Cambridge - put us top with eleven points from the six games, the same record as our semi-final opponents.

Head-to-head results against Burton, however, bode even better for the U's: a fantastic 2-1 away win on a cold Friday night in November was followed up with a less enthralling, but no less important 0-0 draw at the Abbey, our last game of 2007. Should these results be repeated, they would be enough to book a date at Wembley - can lightening strike twice?

Rob Wolleaston attracts three Burton players

Interestingly, this mini-league shows Torquay, 9/4 joint favourites to win the play-offs along with Cambridge, with just three points from a possible eighteen. Whether they can reverse this trend of losing in the big games remains to be seen, while such poor form will provide a boost to Quinn and his team, not to mention Exeter who they face in their semi-final.

Only time will tell whether the season has a fairytale ending. Advocates of the play-offs as a lottery theory would surely prefer to see the team finishing highest, in this case the U's, winning promotion, while as the only team to consistently rank in the top five all season - not to mention the only team in the league that champions Aldershot failed to beat - it would seem justice would be done if we were to win. And with the tightest defence in the league, with only three goals conceded to play-off rivals, it seems there is a solid base with which to start in what will undoubtedly be tightly fought contests.

Cambridge have ended their season in the play-offs only twice, both of which had a significant and lasting impact on the club as it is today. Our first appearance, in 1990, culminated in our first and, to date, only appearance at Wembley, which was marked by Dion Dublin's goal and glory for the club, taking it to its highest ever league.

Only two years later and, despite Steve Claridge being just inches away from giving the U's a first-leg lead against Leicester, a comprehensive defeat at Filbert Street (5-0) saw United miss out on a place in the inaugural season of the Premier League; quite what would have happened to the club had that play-off campaign ended differently will never be known, but let's hope we aren't asking the same questions at the end of this season.

The statistics, at least, suggest we might not be.

Oli Worth.

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