The FA Cup loves an underdog.

Today, Scunthorpe United will come face to face with the greatest of all.

Forget 1988 and the Crazy Gang's crazy success over Division One champions Liverpool at Wembley.

Neither Lawrie Sanchez's looping first-half header or Dave Beasant's history-making penalty save come close to the tale the current Wimbledon set-up tell.

It is nine years since AFC Wimbledon were born out of nothing but the drive and determination of a group of devastated supporters, a phoenix rising from the flames of the decision to allow the former Wimbledon to relocate to Milton Keynes.

In those action-packed years, the Wombles have gone 78 league matches without defeat and won promotion five times.

The pinnacle of their incredible success came at the City of Manchester Stadium, in May, when a penalty shootout victory over Luton Town hoisted them back into the Football League, much to the delight of 7,000 fans – and almost every football-loving neutral.

Whether that was always the ambition 'depends on who you ask', according to chief executive Erik Samuelson, a retired former partner of professional network services company PricewaterhouseCoopers.

But whether keen to put the club back on the map, or simply to rekindle a love affair with a fallen team, the outcome has been better than even the most optimistic would have foreseen.

"During a speech at the meeting where we were trying to decide what to do, one of the founders said, 'look, I just want to watch some football'. That became a bit of a mantra," Samuelson, who used his expertise to help produce the club's first-ever business plan, tells the Telegraph.

"Other people like me said we had to aim to get into the Football League.

"A lot of energy went into getting the club up and running, but we were incredibly naive. None of us ever thought once that it wouldn't work.

"When I was clearing out my office the other day, I found our first five-year plan.

"Given we hadn't a clue what we were doing it was remarkably prescient as to where we'd be.

"We just took things one league at a time saying 'let's get promotion, let's get promotion' and when it came to the Conference 'this one's a bit tough, but let's get promotion again'.

"Now we're in the Football League it's 'let's get promotion again'. I don't see why we shouldn't."

If it happens, there is every chance AFC Wimbledon will go head to head with the people that first stole their identity and then chewed it up and spat it out.

Despite their understandable hatred towards those who took the Dons from the borough of Wimbledon, it is a meeting few with the Wombles crave.

"The media and neutrals are riveted by the idea we might play them (the MK Dons)," says Samuelson.

"Personally I hate the idea and I'd rather not be here when it happens.

"What we've done is proved you can, even with hardly any money, work your way up from the bottom of the pyramid relatively quickly. We've done it the right way.

"That's not to prove anything to them, though if we were moving to a new stadium in Wimbledon and were still in the Football League, it would be very tempting to ask 'why did you leave?'.

"I don't know how they'd respond."

There are a host of fantastic stories associated with the Wombles' rise.

Born 18 months after the memorable win, current first-team goalkeeper Seb Brown jokes his own conception was a product of the '88 Cup capers – with his parents in the stands at Wembley.

As a 10-year-old fan he was at The Dell to witness the day the Dons dropped out of the Premier League in 2000 and he was also part of supporters' protests against the move to Milton Keynes.

Then there's the tale of Dons Trust founder member Ian Hidden who, like so many fans, gives up his spare time to help manage the club shop – something he describes as 'a real labour of love' given it was previously the groundsman's garage.

Such quirky snippets make great reading, but the serious, and most impressive, part of the story is that success has been achieved on a shoestring in what Samuelson describes as 'the Wimbledon way'.

Like their visitors on Saturday, every penny spent has been earned.

New signings are told in no uncertain terms there will be no brown envelopes – but pay packets are always delivered on time.

Solvency will always come before success, even though the Dons have combined both.

"If we can get this new stadium, which is a massive if, I think we can get ourselves up into the Championship into the fullness of time," says Samuelson, adding that the Wombles are on course to make a profit again this season.

"It's tough now. We have the fourth lowest budget in League Two, but that doesn't matter – we had the 14th lowest budget in the Conference and came second.

"We'll manage because we have a very young team and a manager who manages his young men very well.

"We'll find other ways of increasing our funds so we can give him a bit more money to spend. But we'll do it the Wimbledon way.

"We run our business as hard as we can and we drive up as much money as we can so we can splash it all out on having the best football team we can afford.

"But we don't splash more than we've earned."

Wimbledon are yet to beat a league club in the FA Cup, although they did dump the Iron's League One rivals Stevenage out of the Johnstone's Paint Trophy a month ago.

Today, though, is already a day for firsts – their place in the Football League earns them an automatic pass into the competition's first round proper – so no-one will rule out an upset.

"The finance man in me says I liked being in the earlier, qualifying rounds because there was a chance of winning and you'd make a bit of money on the way through," laughs their chief executive.

"The romantic in me – although my wife would never recognise that word – thinks it's great to start in the first round proper.

"We know it's going to be difficult, playing a team in the league above.

"Scunthorpe are a proper club with a proper history. I don't meant to diminish other clubs by saying that, but this is a real challenge.

"On the face of it, it's not impossible we might win. But I'm sure it will be good fun."

Club-shop worker Hidden rates Wimbledon's fairytale rise from Fourth Division to First during the early 1980s – also achieved in nine years, in a delightful example of statistical symmetry – as more noteworthy than their FA Cup win ("I was never in any doubt that we would win that day").

Is a repeat of either possible?

"Personally, I doubt it," he says.

"But we should never say never with our history!"