London Irish have always had an had an idea of their rightful place, and it isn’t in the lower reaches of the Premiership, never mind slogging it out in the second tier.
At an emotionally fraught Madejski Stadium on Wednesday night, the Exiles returned to the top flight at the first attempt after beating Yorkshire Carnegie in the Championship play-off final.
A club who have been stalwarts of the Premiership era, reaching the final against Leicester at Twickenham as recently as 2009, were relegated last season.
New Zealander Tom Coventry left at the end a traumatic 2015/16 campaign and Nick Kennedy, who served the club so well during his playing days, replaced him as director of rugby alongside fellow academy coaches George Skivington, Declan Danaher and Paul Hodgson.
The move has proved a resounding success.
Brendan Venter, who laid the foundations for Saracens’ current dynasty, works as a consultant for the Exiles and his input had proved invaluable.
Having largely kept together their squad from last season thanks to a £1.5m parachute payment, Irish finished top of the Championship before negotiating a two-legged play-off semi-final and final against Doncaster and Yorkshire Carnegie respectively.
Irish lost just once in the regular season as they secured top spot by March, but had to negotiate the Championship play-offs before confirming their promotion.
There are more than three months before the new Premiership season, but Kennedy revealed the club has already been busy recruiting.
"We've done the majority of our signings," he said. "We've signed people that want to come to this club and believe in what we're doing.
"If we'd lost this tie, they were turning up anyway and we'd have kept fighting and fighting to put this club back on the top."
Promotion back to the Premiership will be worth around £2million in central funding from the RFU and additional revenue.
Rather than plying their trade on the playing fields of Yorkshire, Jersey, Ealing, Bedford and Nottingham, Kennedy’s men can look forward to taking on powerhouses of the game such as Leicester, Bath, Wasps, Northampton and Saracens.
Irish's return to the capital is also on the horizon as they have agreed a deal to play at Brentford FC's proposed new 20,000 stadium from August 2019.
Irish play their home games at Reading's Madejski Stadium and are contracted to groundshare until the 2025-26 season, although a get-out clause can allow the deal to break early, so they can move to west London.
Irish are a club on the up and the commercial revenues on offer for Premiership teams should help Irish attract even more top international players now promotion be secured.
The Exiles already boast players such as World Cup-winning New Zealand prop Ben Franks, former England winger Topsy Ojo, back-row Mike Coman, South African lock Sebastian De Chaves, while academy graduates Harry Elrington and Joe Cokanasiga have also impressed.
As Kennedy said, though, it has been very much a team effort, from top to bottom.
He added: "There's relief and happiness, but we're just delighted to be back in the Premiership where I believe this club belongs.
"We've rotated the squad all year and all the players fully deserve to be up there celebrating."
