Alan Ashman and Dick Young completed the minor miracle of lifting United from the Fourth Division to the First in just ten years.

The Cumbrians won their final league match 2-0 at home to Aston Villa on April 27, and this kept them in third place and in line for promotion. However, they had to endure an agonising six-day wait for Orient to play their final game, also at home to Villa, as it happened. If the Londoners won, then they would have gone up instead of Carlisle on goal average.

Thankfully, the game ended 1-1 on the Friday night before the FA Cup Final, and so United were up into the top flight for the one and (so far) only time in their history.

It was a season that had started so unpromisingly. In the second game of the campaign, Allan Ross was beaten six times before half time by his old team, Luton Town. That thrashing was the catalyst for a poor start of one win in six games. However, as summer signing Frank Clarke started to hit it off up front with "Smokin" Joe Laidlaw and another new recruit, Bill Green, began to shore up the defence, United steadily climbed the table.

By Christmas, promotion was being openly talked about. Green headed the first goal of two to beat Luton in the return match on New Year's Day at Brunton Park and it was clear history was being made. The 3-0 televised victory over Orient in February was another key success, with Clarke and Laidlaw combining for the goals, while Clarke was the star of a 5-1 drubbing of lowly Swindon in March, as he netted four times.

Easter was a crunch time. United lost at Sunderland on Good Friday, which could have been disastrous, but they fought back to defeat a Nottingham Forest side who included Duncan McKenzie in his prime and then Sunderland in the re-match three days later. Even then, it all looked to be going pear-shaped when 5,000 Blues fans went down the motorway to see Blackpool inflict a damaging 4-0 defeat on the penultimate Saturday of the season. Salvation came in the form of a late Bobby Owen winner at Oxford in midweek and then that draining finale against Villa. The fans who swarmed on at the end thought it was all over - but the PA informed them that it wasn't. Six days later that Orient result ensured it finally was.