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Wayne Pollack tears up when asked what it means to see the Viking horn he built make its way to this weekend's NRL grand final.
The resident of Gundagai, near Canberra, is one of many who has waited 25 years to see the Green Machine make that milestone.
It means even more to him to know the horn, now symbolic of the euphoric energy surrounding the Canberra Raiders, will also be there on the day.
Set to be blown by club great Mal Meninga on Sunday, the horn — which leads fans in the Viking clap — began life very humbly but has come to represent all of Canberra's hopes for a win.
"It's unreal. There's a lot of energy behind the clap, it's amazing," Raiders forward Sia Soliola said.
"To hear the horn and to hear the first clap … what it signals is that we are ready for war."
The horn — and a few US sports teams — help launch an era
Mr Pollack, an electrician, was called up in early 2017 by his son Ben, the Raiders' media manager, who had an unexpected question.
Ben was relaying a request from the club's marketing team, which had decided to take bold steps to bring in new members.
Central to the plan was a Viking horn and a clap, which they had witnessed in action courtesy of Iceland's soccer team.
That team had experienced unexpected success in qualifying for the European championships and Iceland was swept up on a wave of excitement. The clap acted as an ideal funnel for that energy, Raiders commercial and marketing manager Jason Mathie said.
"We latched onto that and thought, well, we're Vikings, we're Raiders," he said.
Other ideas were picked up from a tour of the United States, where sport goes beyond competition and aims to entertain, regardless of what happens in the match.
"The horn is taken from the Minnesota Vikings. They have this massive horn that is played to bring their team onto to the field," Mr Mathie said.
"And the concept to get a club legend or VIP to blow that horn was taken from the Seattle Seahawks."
He said the crucial change for the Raiders, from 2017, was to use these strategies to better engage with locals. That included introducing the "autograph alley" and attracting younger people by making the players more accessible.
The club also wanted the team to be appreciated for their sporting prowess, whatever hurdles they faced on game night, he said.
And it worked.
"[The club's] growth has been unbelievable for us," Mr Mathie said. "When we went to America, we had a membership base of just over 14,000 … In the last two years, we've surpassed 20,000.
"Prior to that, we noticed the typical Raiders fan was a 49-year-old male and we noticed in the segments of 18 to 25 years there were not great numbers."
The Viking horn and clap helped changed that, and became central to the Raiders' new identity.
And Soliola says these new traditions do more than just stir up the crowd.
"It just gets all the emotions. You want to talk about getting warmed up and getting your heart rate up, that's one way to do it."
Labour of love, even with a broken hand
Many are surprised to learn the Viking horn doesn't actually create the blaring call that inspires the clap. But Wayne Pollack scoffed at the idea his creation could possibly emit that sound.
"If you can imagine the acoustics of the whole thing, to get a sound like that it would have to be highly amplified," he said.
His six-week labour of love was not without challenges. "It was all designed on the run," he said.
"I was a bit casual to start off with and, as the deadline started to come up, I started to panic."
He also injured his hand and, keen not to have it in plaster and further hamper his efforts, he avoided the doctor.
"I actually spent the last half building it with one hand," he said.
The club was surprised when he came to them with a sketch showing a design of about three metres in length.
"And they said 'is it going to be that big?' and I said 'well, people are going to need to see it'."
It's a good point: after all, the aim of the horn is not to make sound but rather to symbolise a club's return to glory.
Mr Pollack said he was "extremely proud" to see his polystyrene masterpiece make its way to ANZ stadium this week, invoking emotions he never knew he had.
"I'm not normally like this."
The past marketing pitch that curdled
Back in the 1990s, "Raiders Lime" was the marketing pitch that could … and then couldn't.
The green, lime-flavoured milk looked quirky enough to attract attention, but it never sold well.
Even when Canberra Milk brought it back in 2013, the product didn't last long, no matter how hard the team campaigned, as this ad with former coach David Furner and star player Bradley Clyde shows:
Today, the Raiders are committed to Canberra Milk's current choc-mint flavour and a single, blaring Viking horn.
Topics: sport, sports-organisations, advertising-and-marketing, rugby-league, nrl, australia, act, canberra-2600