Accrington, the small Lancashire town with a Football League tradition dating back 130 years, is celebrating as never before. Its team, for so long synonymous with underdog ignominy, have secured a first league promotion, more than 50 years after going bust and tumbling into oblivion. Their ascent to League One is the latest ste​p​ in the extraordinary revival of Accrington Stanley, the self-styled “club that wouldn’t die”.

Stanley first joined the league in 1921, following in the footsteps of Accrington FC, inaugural Football League members who lasted for only six years. Their successor survived for longer but found things no easier. Trapped between Burnley and Blackburn, and circled by even bigger fish in Merseyside and Manchester, Stanley faced a constant battle to stay afloat.

The club’s only respite from the bottom tier came in 1958, when they were drafted into the new national Division Three. Four years later financial problems forced them out of the league and by 1966 the club had folded. Stanley disappeared for two years before being reborn in the back room of a pub and settling into non-league anonymity.

Their name became best known for a mocking reference in a milk advert. “Accrington Stanley, who are they?” may still have its own Wikipedia page but the team that the club president, Peter Marsden, called “the most famous minnows in the world” have now returned emphatically to the map.

The stewardship of the long-time manager, John Coleman, and the owner, Andy Holt, who took over in 2015, has allowed the perennial strugglers to broaden their ambitions.

The roots of Stanley’s surge to the third division can be found in 1999, when the then-owner Eric Whalley appointed Coleman, a non-league journeyman at the end of his playing career, who immediately took the team up to the sixth tier. Progress then came from an unlikely spark – the Blackpool forward Brett Ormerod. When the former Stanley part-timer and cotton mill worker joined Southampton for £2m in 2001, his first club received 25% of the fee.

The windfall helped Accrington climb into the Conference and secure full-time status, laying the foundations for an unexpected league return in 2006. Their new status brought back old financial concerns, with Coleman conjuring a late run of wins to keep them up in their first season, and the threat of a second bankruptcy never far away.

The team owe their league return and subsequent survival to a string of benefactors with roots in the town, from Whalley and Marsden to the banker Ilyas Khan and former Lancashire and England cricketer David Lloyd, enamoured of his hometown club’s will to “fart against thunder”. Marsden also wanted to turn Stanley’s hard-luck story into a motivating source of pride. When he reappointed Coleman and his assistant, Jimmy Bell, in 2014 after a two-year absence, he urged the club to put aside their “misplaced sense of inferiority”.

Accrington manager, John Coleman, gets a kiss to mark his success in taking the team out of League Two. Photograph: Dave Thompson/PA

Holt’s investment has bolstered this new self-belief and the owner has become a prominent cheerleader. Last year he pointed out that the club’s £2.2m turnover was less than every current top-flight club spent on agent fees in a single year – in short, Stanley are “a starving peasant begging for scraps” from the Premier League table.

The club’s main men have also endured run-ins with the Football League. Coleman spoke out after Carlisle were allowed to move home games in the wake of flooding in 2015, an option he claimed was not available to Accrington. This season Holt’s revelation that he gives the team £200 to spend in McDonald’s after wins has led to ill-advised EFL intervention. The league has since tried to bury the hatchet, presenting Holt with a burger at its annual awards ceremony days before promotion was confirmed.

Timeline Accrington's long road to redemption Show Rising from the ashes 620 fans turn up to watch the club’s first Lancashire Combination game – with Terry Tigle becoming the only player to play in both the old and new teams. Who are they? The famous Milk Marketing Board advert airs for the first time, featuring two young Liverpool fans, Carl Rice and Kevin Staine. Their exchange – “Accrington Stanley, who are they? Exactly” – becomes the talk of school playgrounds nationwide. Up for the Cup Now in the Northern Premier League Premier Division, Stanley reach the second round of the FA Cup, but lose to Crewe. Coleman begins with a bang A year after relegation, new manager John Coleman takes them straight back up to the Premier Division as champions. In the money The club receives a 25% sell-on-fee after Blackpool accept a £2m bid for old boy Brett Ormerod from Southampton. Promotion to the Conference Stanley win the title and reach the Conference. They finish 10th in their first season, and reach the FA Cup third round, going full-time soon after. Back to the Football League Coleman’s side wins the Conference by eleven points. Advert star Carl Rice is guest of honour as they reach League Two. Coleman returns After 16 months under ex-England striker James Beattie, Coleman returns, and, four years later, they reach League One.

The forward Billy Kee, named in the EFL’s team of the season at last week’s ceremony, truly embodies the Accrington way. Released by Leicester City at the age of 20, Kee was nurtured by Coleman at a time when he wanted to walk away from football. The manager has not forced a nutritional regime on his target man and gave the striker time off to deal with anxiety and depression. He has repaid his manager with more than 50 league goals, including the double that secured promotion against Yeovil on Tuesday.

On and off the field Stanley have reaped the benefits of doing things differently. After home wins at the Crown Ground, £1 pints of beer are served up to supporters, and Coleman has built a team worthy of promotion at an equally modest price. Promotion to the third tier for a team once best remembered as a punchline is an incredible achievement but not a shock based on recent results. Stanley missed out by the width of a post in 2016 and have lost once since Boxing Day.

Kee, Coleman and even Holt, who has thrown himself into the realities of lower-league football, may need time to adjust to their new surroundings. They will play teams whose grounds could hold most of the town’s 35,000 population, but it would be a mistake to write them off. They are a club that have survived and thrived by doing things on their own terms.