Can a first cup win change a club?

"I've been coming here since I was a boy, and I never thought I'd see this day." The voice belongs to a man in his seventies, tears in his eyes, standing in the middle of a bouncing, singing, disbelieving red and white crowd.

This was the scene at Wembley on 8 April, as Crawley Town lifted the Bristol Street Motors Trophy for the first time in their history. A single goal from Liam Hollis, struck in the 76th minute, was enough to see off Aston Villa Under-21s. The final whistle was greeted not just with joy, but with a kind of stunned silence from the older fans – the ones who remember the days of non-league football, of long coach trips to places that no longer exist, of hoping just to have a club to support.

For Crawley, this is a moment that goes beyond the trophy itself. The club has known hardship and heartbreak, but it has also known growth. From the lower reaches of the pyramid to the third tier, and now, to a national cup final. The players will tell you that the manager told them before the game that this was their chance to write their names into the club's story. And they did.

The winning goal was everything you want from a final: a moment of composure in a game of nerves. Hollis, a player who has become something of a cult hero among the Crawley faithful, found himself in space on the edge of the box. He didn't rush, didn't snatch. He placed the ball low and hard into the bottom corner, and then he ran – not to the corner flag, but straight to the fans, arms outstretched, as if to say: this is for you.

And it was. The supporters had travelled in their thousands, filling their end of Wembley with noise and colour. They sang for the whole 90 minutes, and long after. They sang about their town, their club, their players. They sang about the day they won a cup.

For Aston Villa Under-21s, it was a day of what might have been. They had their chances, and they will point to a disallowed goal in the first half, but on this occasion, the story belonged to the underdogs from West Sussex.

As the Crawley players climbed the steps to lift the trophy, the old man in the crowd was still crying. "My dad would have loved this," he said. "He took me to my first game when I was small. But he always said, one day, we'll have our day. And now we have."

For Crawley Town, this is not the end of anything. It is a beginning. A first trophy, a first taste of success at this level, and a memory that will last a lifetime.