The side who finished sixth in the Championship have not won promotion through the play-offs since Blackpool managed it in 2010. Derby County have spent the intervening years seemingly finding new and more elaborate ways not to go up but they took a step towards the top flight with a battling 1-0 win over Fulham in the first leg of their semi-final on Friday night.

This was a granite solid performance from Derby, defending Cameron Jerome’s first-half header as if the very future of the club depended on it, and keeping Ryan Sessegnon and Aleksandar Mitrovic, who have laid waste to the Championship at times this season, quiet all night.

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“You have to do that against Fulham,” said the Derby manager, Gary Rowett, afterwards. “We were very, very disciplined.” And they were: this was the first time Fulham have failed to score in any game since January, drawing a blank here after producing a masterclass in ‘sterile domination’. Statistics do not always tell the full story but that Fulham had 74% possession and lost sums up the evening nicely.

Fulham’s manager, Slavisa Jokanovic, did not seem overly concerned, though. “It’s not a bad result,” he said afterwards. “Definitely not the result we deserved. This is a very good performance from my point of view.”

The game started in that usual frantic, uncoordinated mess that these play-offs tend to. Both teams tried to start on the front foot, which is a sure recipe for entertaining chaos. Fulham tried surgically to pick holes in the Derby backline but without any real joy. A couple of fairly weak efforts was the best they could manage. The Rams showed little of the same intricacy, yet their more simple approach was brilliantly rewarded in the 34th minute.

Tom Huddlestone spread the ball to Craig Forsyth who, pinged over a superb cross from deep on the left, right on to the head of Jerome, who powered his effort into the net. Before the run-in Jerome had scored only once since joining Derby in January: that was his fifth in the last four games. When he signed it seemed like a curious move: now it looks inspired.

The Fulham of the first half looked more like the side of the past few weeks, when they have seemed tired and tense. It is tempting to think that extraordinary run, 23 games unbeaten that nearly won them automatic promotion, had come a tiny bit too early and had sapped their energy. One could tell the travelling fans were getting nervous: at the start of the second half they started booing a ballboy.

After the break their team showed more purpose: Kevin McDonald belted a shot against the bar, Floyd Ayite volleyed over from a terrific long pass by Matt Targett and Tom Cairney curled a shot just wide. Yet they struggled to create a significant chances of note.

Mitrovic, so often Fulham’s brutal inspiration in the latter months of the season, struggled to find space to do much damage and began dropping deeper and deeper as he searched for the ball. Plenty of credit must go to Curtis Davies, who marshalled the big Serb superbly. “Defensively all game, we handled them really, really well,” said Rowett.

Sessegnon, the boy wonder of the Championship, was also kept quiet. He was taken off with 15 minutes to go, his anonymous performance suggesting two things: that Andre Wisdom had done a fine job in neutralising him, and also that a rumoured call-up to the senior England squad is too soon for a player who does not turn 18 until next week.

On the touchline, as Fulham attack after Fulham attack was snuffed out, Jokanovic, in that brooding manner of his, cast his eyes towards the ground like a parent who was not angry, just disappointed. If this often thrilling side do not go up this season, it will be a shame but in truth they deserved no more from a game where they did not make enough of their theoretical domination. They will need to be more clinical in the return on Monday.

The result leaves the second leg placed beautifully. “We can’t go down there and try to protect the lead. We’ve got to try to win the game,” Rowett said, expressing the requisite degree of caution. “It gives us a slender lead but, as we know, that can be cancelled out in a second. I didn’t let them have the music on in the dressing room because we’ve got to be focused for the next game.”