Roger Brooks missed out on a lot of the raucous celebrations that followed Dunedin Technical's memorable win in the 1999 Chatham Cup final.
While his players filled a bath with beer to wallow in the glory of their club's greatest night, Brooks quietly thought about packing his sunscreen and swimming togs.
"The celebrations were extensive, it's fair to say," Brooks recalled this week.
"We all stayed the night in Auckland. But I actually flew out first thing in the morning because I had a holiday booked to Australia.
"The guys headed back to Dunedin and I headed the other way. I got to celebrate a little bit but I had to get some shut-eye."
Brooks was the architect of a great era for Technical in which it won multiple southern league titles and became a regular Chatham Cup contender.
It all culminated one glorious night in September 1999 when the underdog Dunedin club stunned powerful Waitakere with a 4-0 thumping in the knockout club final.
Tech had reached the final in 1998, where it was thumped 5-0 by Auckland's powerful Central United.
A year later, it pipped Napier City Rovers 2-1 to get back to the final.
"We thought we had a fighting chance but we weren't over-confident," Brooks said of the 1999 final.
"Waitakere were quite heavily favoured to beat us but we just had one of those games. It went end to end. It could have been 4-4 but fortune favoured us."
Former All Whites defender Graham Marshall headed Tech in front after 27 minutes, and a second goal came 3min later when David Johnston crossed for English striker Jason Tee to score.
Justin Flaws added a third with his head in the second half and rising striker Aaron Burgess - who has come back to play for Tech in this year's final - completed the rout.
The result was stunning enough for Waitakere but it also showed the North Island how Southern teams could play football.
Brooks knew the Dunedin had built a very good team well before that memorable final.
"It was a great time. We had four very good seasons where we'd won southern leagues and got to a Chatham Cup final and that sort of thing. The team was getting better and better.
"It was a good side anyway. But we'd actually had an indifferent start to that 1999 season. We came right about July, got on a winning run and really started to believe in ourselves. The longer the season went on, the better we got."
Brooks' team had the youthful verve of Burgess and Tee up front, skill on the flanks in Johnston and Flaws, staunch defenders in Marshall and Jeremy Seales, and an unflappable goalkeeper in Matt Maingay.
But the glue - the Bryan Robson figure - was captain Ian Bell, a typically no-nonsense central midfielder.
Bell described 1999 as a "magic year" when everything went right for Technical, and for himself.
The Chatham Cup final was his last game in a Dunedin strip.
"It was really the end of a pretty big career for me because I was in about my 10th year at the club," Bell said.
"I was actually injured and missed the 1998 final. That was pretty gutting. I remember on the plane home, the coach leaned over and said, 'Next year, Belly'. I thought there was no way we'd make the final again.
"Personally, it was the highlight of my career. And it was a pretty special team to be part of. We had a really good nucleus across the park.
"At the time, there was no national league or anything, so people weren't taking off to Auckland. We had really good players choosing to stay in Dunedin."
Bell, who was 28 at the time, was living in Christchurch in 1999.
He would train with the Western club during the week and fly to Dunedin for games on Saturday.
Oddly, it was a Technical defeat that convinced him Chatham Cup victory was there for the taking.
A week before the final, Tech played Central in the north-south club final, also at North Harbour Stadium, and lost in extra time.
"That was an unbelievable Central team. They had Ivan Vicelich, Noah Hickey, Fred de Jong, Mark Elrick, guys like that. We knew that if we could compete with them, we could compete with anyone.
"That was probably the winning of the final. We had guys out with work commitments and we still nearly beat Central."
Bell later played national league football for Canterbury United.
He and wife Angela and children Weston (6) and Charlotte (4) live in Wanaka.
Dunedin Technical got back to the Chatham Cup semifinals in 2000 but was beaten 1-0 by Central.
Brooks coached Tech for another couple of seasons.
He does not have a day-to-day involvement with the club now but still teaches and coaches at Kings High School, and he runs the Otago Milk Cup squad with Neil McKenzie.
Both Brooks and Bell think the 2008 Dunedin Technical squad has every chance of pocketing another Chatham Cup.
