For many supporters, following Dave Jones' Cardiff City was as good as it got.
Exciting players, hair-raising football and the promise of promotions or cup glory nearly every season. It was a time when Cardiff established themselves as a Championship club which was here to stay.
The club are still reaping the benefits of that transitional period under Jones, who managed for six years and oversaw their transition from Ninian Park to Cardiff City Stadium.
READ MORE: Dave Jones opens up on rejecting Bristol City job
And, in an interview with the TWS Sports Podcast, the 66-year-old has opened up on his time at the helm in the Welsh capital, starting with his first meeting with former chairman Sam Hammam.
"My first meeting with Sam Hammam, he tried to get me to eat sheep's eyes! And other things which I won't mention," he said.
"Sam Hammam was a big character in the football world. A lot of people thought he was crazy - he probably was. But he was part of the Wimbledon crew and they did crazy things.
"My first day in the job at Cardiff, he got one of the apprentices to let all the tyres down on my car, so when I drove off I didn't know all my tyres were flat. He would walk around the pitch, jump in the crowd, he was crazy.
"Peter Ridsdale did a fantastic job at Cardiff, considering when I went there they were £60m in debt, no money, no players. The first few years were very difficult because we had no money whatsoever. No training ground, nothing.
"So when you see the club and the stadium they've got now, it makes me very proud of doing something at that club."
Jones said Hammam sacked him three times in the first month he was at the club and it took some time before the manager really understood the eccentricities of his chairman. Hammam would phone him after one sacking to say, "You know me, boss, I'm only kidding."
And the Liverpudlian detailed just how hectic that first year at Ninian Park really was and having to sign talented cast-offs before trying to blend them all together to become one harmonious unit.
"The first 12 months at Cardiff was very difficult. Having no money, not knowing if you were going to play the next game because they'd not paid the Football League or the electricity for the floodlights, it was a very difficult time," he said.
"But the players I brought in were all waifs and strays. I brought in alcoholics, gamblers, all players that had been released from clubs who were good players but had a problem. It was getting inside their heads and finding out what made them tick. They were great players to work with, you could see them change and turn their lives around.
"They did a great job the first few years at Cardiff, no one else gave them the opportunity, but they were the only players we could afford."
He added: "They spun me a yarn that the club was in great condition. It was only when I got there I found out they were £60m in debt and would have to sell all their best players.
"I went in and we had 25 players. Two weeks later I had seven. They had to sell off players to cover debts and pay bills. But I enjoy challenges like that and the club went from strength to strength.
"That was down to everyone associated with the club at that time. Everyone worked really hard. We wiped off the debt, built a new training ground, stadium, there were some great times there."
The former manager, whose last job was at Hartlepool in 2017, concedes that managing upwards was particularly difficult during those early years at City.
With everything eventually coming out in the wash, Jones can look back on it all now with 20/20 hindsight. So, in the knowledge of all the seemingly bizarre events, the lies and the difficulty, would he have taken the job if he had known what was to follow?
"No. I would have run a million miles away from it!" he joked.
"No, that's not true. I probably would have. My wife thought I was crazy going down there to begin with. I knew they had problems, but I didn't realise the problems they had until I got inside. To not have a training ground, when they told me they did, that was disappointing.
"We just had one pitch across the road from Ninian Park, which all the players had to go on an hour before we had to train and clear up all the dog mess. We sold the players the dream that if they do well, this is what it can be. The first game we played in the new stadium, every player took a great pride in that, because they were part of that.
"I would have seen it as a crazy challenge for me. I like a challenge."
Jones' Cardiff side were always the nearly-men. Losing in play-off final to Blackpool before being defeated by Reading in the semi-final a year later.
He was sacked as Bluebirds boss that year, in 2011, and, looking back on it all, he said: "It's very unusual to be sacked after just missing out on promotion. I think I just fell out with the board. I didn't think they were helping us as much as they should have.
"I have a tendency to fall out with the board sometimes. What I see as the way forward, they always don't. To lose your job after missing out on promotion is harsh, but I'd been there a long time, maybe they thought change was right. It was an unusual situation.
"It was just a disagreement between me and the board, I felt they had let us down the previous two years with not investing in the club with players. They kept expecting me to find players they could buy cheap and sell big. We did at that club, but selling (Aaron) Ramsey, (Glenn) Loovens, (Roger) Johnson, when you're flying, is always difficult to take. And I'd had enough of that. Because we always got close.
"When they did get promoted, the people who came in had the money to buy players. I wish they'd done that with me. But I'm not bitter in anyway. I was just more annoyed that it could have been done a couple of years earlier, but we had to sell the best players every window."
Jones had just one year at the club with Vincent Tan, the Malaysian businessman who still owns Cardiff.
It's an understatement to say Tan has courted controversy during his 12-year stint, but Jones argued the case for the defence when speaking about the Bluebirds owner.
Tan's ownership still divides opinion to this day, but Jones says Cardiff owe their owner a huge debt of gratitude.
Jones said: "I spoke to him quite a lot. I flew over to Thailand to have dinner with him in the biggest dining room I've ever seen in my life. It was a ballroom with a table in the middle. By the time the food got to you it was cold - because it was a million miles away from the kitchen!
"Very wealthy man and a really nice man as well. Fans had a got at him, but he was ploughing millions into the club. They would moan about his dress sense, him buying the club... but he saved the club and is still saving the club now and people still have a go at him.
"I found him a bit aloof, but generally a good man and a good person. Unfortunately I never got the time with him that maybe I should have. He didn't even know I'd been sacked! It was two other members of the board that sacked me, he didn't know!
"I got on well with him and I've spoken to him over the years on odd occasions.
"Fans have got to be very careful that when they don't like what's going on inside a football club and they start chanting for the board to be sacked and everything else, they have got to be careful because sometimes it's better the devil you know than the devil you don't."
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