In 2005, Jock Hobbs won New Zealand the right to host last year's Rugby World Cup.
The result left him looking stunned - an expression not often seen on the face of a man who, as a lawyer, the chairman of the NZRU and an All Black, often won and got what he wanted.
But emotion almost got the better of him and cameras showed him struggling not to cry. Hours later as he continued to take questions, his wife, Nicky, rewarded him with a beer.
It was Hobbs and co - including Prime Minister Helen Clark and All Black captain Tana Umaga - who drove home a message that the country could be a stadium of four million.
And it was a fitting win for the man whose lifelong commitment to the sport put him at some of the code's most important moments in the past two decades.