A rags to riches story of sporting success provided a front page wrap for a regional daily, put together with just an hour to go before deadline.

The Bournemouth Echo also celebrated AFC Bournemouth’s likely promotion to English football’s top flight for the first time in its history with a live blog featuring fans’ reactions, which stayed up and running until the early hours of this morning.

The club, affectionately known as the Cherries, effectively won their place in the Premier League with a 3-0 victory over Bolton Wanderers last night, with only a freak result this coming Saturday now able to prevent their ascent.

Four Echo reporters and three photographers covered the match at the Cherries’ Dean Court stadium, with the blog receiving between 25,000 and 30,000 web hits over the course of the day.

The wrap, pictured above, features a photo of Cherries manager Eddie Howe on the front and a quote dedicating his success to his late mother on the back.

As well as the wrap and the usual match report, a spread appeared on pages four and five of today’s edition featuring pictures of supporters at the match.

An extra 3,000 copies of the Echo were printed this lunchtime due to reader demand.

The club’s success comes just six years after its players were carrying around buckets at a public meeting to raise funds as their employer was under threat of going out of business.

The Echo’s acting editor Andy Martin has welcomed the promotion as good news for the club, town and newspaper.

He said: “Obviously first and foremost it’s fantastic for the football club. We’ve followed this club’s fortunes for many years, particularly in the last 20 years when they’ve nearly gone out of business three times.

“From the newspaper’s point of view it’s a huge opportunity for us in terms of sales and web hits. It’s a great opportunity to promote our relationship with the club and expand our brand.”

Ahead of last night’s match, the Echo also splashed on the build-up as yesterday’s front page, pictured below, was adorned with the red and black stripes in which the team play.

The newspaper’s logo has also been changed on its website to reflect the same colour scheme, and features the club’s crest in the middle.

Further supplements commemorating the historic victory are planned to run in the next few days.

Andy added the paper wouldn’t have been struggling to fill pages had the match not gone to script last night.

He said: “We had a standby front and obviously the match report would’ve gone in, in any case.  Had it not gone the way it did we wouldn’t have been caught short.”