The Penrith Panthers have finally broken through for a premiership, and Phil Gould's plan has paid off.
He might have come to the club with a five-year plan, but make no mistake - this premiership is born from his legacy.
He spent years at the foot of the mountains setting up a centre of excellence, developing the junior pathways at the club, and with a team of mainly Penrith juniors, they were able to kick away to defeat the South Sydney Rabbitohs in a thriller by two points.
From Nathan Cleary to Jarome Luai, to Dylan Edwards and Spencer Leniu off the bench, or even the incredible story of Liam Martin Penrith have built a team of Penrith local juniors out of the pathways Gould built.
As Nathan Cleary said after the game, the Penrith team are like a "big family" with many of the players growing up with each other and playing junior football.
This a team who excelled for many years as junior footballers, and the systems put in place at the club are now outlasting Gould.
What makes the premiership for Penrith all the more impressive was the way they were able to rebound from last year's heartbreak.
This is a club built on resilience. The stories of players who have tracked from the country for a chance at the NRL will tell you that, but the fact they were able to not only lose last year's grand final, but deal with stars being injured during the second half of this season and keep winning despite the enormous pressure they felt tells you exactly how special this story is.
It's a story which will be written and re-written by those at the foot of the mountains, celebrating their first premiership since 2003.
Their Week 1 loss to the Rabbitohs themselves may have been the single biggest moment to rebound from, but it may have also been the moment which steeled them for what was to come.
Three incredibly difficult games on the hop throughout the finals series - wins over the Parramatta Eels, Melbourne Storm and then Rabbitohs in the big dance in front of 39,000 fans at Suncorp Stadium.
Resilience is a theme which will run deep into the memory of this 2021 season - a season defined by hub life, COVID and a relocation mid-season.
But the Panthers have had it run tougher and stronger than any other side to come away with the eventual premiership, playing a Panthers brand of football, with players brought up in the Panthers system.
In the end, it was their defence which pushed them over the line in the grand final, which is only fitting given the way they played their season.
At one point, they were conceding less than ten points per game. The first half of the season saw them sweep all who came before them out of the way as if they were nothing more than the proverbial fly in front of a truck.
Things, as mentioned, got tougher once the second half of the season rolled around in the fallout from State of Origin, but it didn't change the resolve.
They finished the regular season with the best defensive record, and then came good again at the right time to let in just six tries across the entire finals series.
As if it needed to be tougher for the Panthers, they have also become the first team to make the grand final after playing Week 2 of the finals since the North Queensland Cowboys in 2017, and the first team to win it after doing so since 2015.
After all those years of being at the wrong end of the table, wondering if they'd ever get to the promised land after Gould's tenure at the club, they have finally done it.
Last year was a bitter pill to swallow, but as the saying goes, you have to lose one before you can win one.
That may not be the case for the South Sydney Rabbitohs, with many suggesting their premiership window slams shut tonight regardless of the result, but the Panthers are premiers, and deservingly so.
A five-year plan it may not have been, but a plan it was.
It's delivered the Panthers a premiership, and Gould's legacy should include it.
