A club back where they belong, Luton Town's identity returns with a flourish.

As England’s fifth tier season dwindled to a close in 2014 the bond between players, management and supporters of Luton Town was soon to develop further. News of a Cambridge United defeat at a distant Aggborough Stadium meant only one thing. Pop the champagne. Cavort on the sticky pub floors. The Hatters had topped non-league. But they were not finished there.

That demoralising, maddening five-year spell in the Conference Premier — triggered by a mighty 30-point deduction from the Football League for continued insolvency issues — had assuredly ended to the sight of a vivid horizon glittering with renewed hope arising over their metallic home of Kenilworth Road. A smidgen under eight years further into the future, still at the same fiery, compact place of residence, they lie a point shy of the Championship play-off places as the current chapter nears its culmination. There is a sense of belonging, of justification, crackling within the enclosed stands.

Last Wednesday evening, as the 80s nostalgia dripped slowly from the overhanging roofs, Luton were visited by Chelsea in the FA Cup Fifth Round Proper. For flashes they belittled the Club World Cup Champions, twice snatching a first half lead before the £97.5m Romelu Lukaku spoiled all the fun with 78 minutes aglow on the Subbuteo-style scoreboard. Luton bowed out. Gasping for breath, but heads held high towards a night sky. Cramped supporters yearning for some shoulder space clap proudly on their feet. The prospect of a once unimaginable rematch in matter of months remains a strong possibility.

Few ascensions have been so soundlessly swift, yet Luton’s tumultuous past carries a dense pong of peaks and troughs. To the minds more aged or eidetic reminders of top-flight football at Kenilworth Road will flood into the hippocampus. That was as ‘recent’ as 1992. They’d be playing in the bottom of the Football League just eight years later. Sounds familiar. David Pleat’s second dynasty had failed. Terry Westley was somehow worse and Lennie Lawrence’s ideology that Luton belonged in the fourth tier understandably did not sit overly well with a now weakening and despondent fanbase, standing forlornly about the terraces. Stir in a dyad of administrations and the very identity of the club was in crisis.

But the catharsis arrived through Mike Newell. They whizzed up the leagues and settled in the Championship…until a whopping points deduction shoved them down the slippery slide of sorrow. It was a game of snakes and ladders, and Luton needed either enhanced luck with the dice or to adequately sort out their finances. And that’s where Gary Sweet steps into the shot. Sweet was part of the Luton 2020 consortium that rescued the club from financial insecurity in 2008, and has reigned from the top as chief executive officer ever since.

“Once we're out of this difficult promotion, there are no bounds to what we can achieve”, Sweet stated following his side's latest return to the Football League. Words of the purest wisdom, the emphasis remained on taking things steady. "That doesn't mean to say that we're going to do it quickly”, added Sweet. Well you got that one wrong, sugar. Swiftly they rose up the various standings of English football, settling into the second-tier by 2019 with a healthy dose of relegation flirting. 19th. 12th. 8th. Dramatic progress, but the latter numeral can change: nine points currently separate 4th and 14th.

Luton's recent prosperity has been by virtue of renewed investment and a sage eye for the transfer market. It was Andre Gray’s thirty league goals that cannoned them away from the Conference Premier. It was Danny Hylton’s forty goals in two campaigns that propelled them into League One. And it has been the right-foot of James Collins that has brought them to this basecamp near the summit, and kept them within contention ever since. Unlike the original Wimbledon, whose brashness on the beaten pastures earned them a similarly speedy surge through the standings, Luton’s has been more meticulously mapped out, cared for, cradled. Like a mischievous child that keeps getting held back a year, there comes a time when you want that insolent infant to succeed in life.

Reformed and rehabilitated. The yellow sun casts a brighter glow over Bedfordshire’s most populous settlement. Though many a passing visitor may offer a slither of hesitance to such wild judgement, the club’s increasing sheen slaps a fresh coast of paint over an infamous town. A new stadium that doesn't require walking through someone’s living room to provide a greater depth and width of income streams. More fans, more revenue, more success. That’s how a team prospers. The initial plan was getting them back to where they belong. The new plan is to keep them there, with one sharp eye glued to the improbable.

And when Kenilworth Road finally shuts its rickety turnstiles for good after being a loyal home for close to 120 years, think of it not as a fading member of the family, but as an emblem for its unique history. It’s charm will live on in the hearts of all who strode through the gardens and the alleys, out onto the low-roofed terrace for an obstructed glimpse of the tremendously saggy netting and boggy turf. Ghosts of legends will continue to roam the turf. Generations upon generations feeding the swirling noise. This is proper football. It will never cease to exist.