Newcastle Knights fans lined the road outside the club's training centre at Broadmeadow on Saturday morning as the city's team departed for Sydney and a do-or-die clash with the Panthers.
If they return victorious after at the weekend, the Knight's first grand final berthing since 2001 will be assured.
Fans and families were out in a wash of red and blue as the stars arrived Saturday morning, September 26, ahead of their departure.
Among them, Linda Duke and her mum Neva Yarnall who, at 81, has been devoted to the Knights since 1988.
It has been a long time since the city felt this way, Ms Duke said, but the team pride could never be fully extinguished.
"We have been through the hard times," she said. "But now we can experience this. We're already winners."
Ms Duke will travel to Sydney on Sunday to be among the crowd as the Knights' Cinderella story season from 2025 wood spooners to finals challengers inches ever closer to that long awaited return to the top of the competition.
"Nobody expected this. And every week they keep saying, we're not gonna make it," Ms Duke said. "But we're not stopping. It's like Matty and Andrew Johns said - we've got the heart."
"They just don't give up."
The Knights enter the third week of the NRL finals on Sunday as strong underdogs, but the team has defied expectations all season.
As the club has chalked win after win to stay alive in the finals, the fever among fans has intensified in the Hunter.
It will reach boiling point on Sunday afternoon at Accor Stadium.
For Ms Duke - a life long diehard from a family of diehards - it was not a matter of if, but when.
"When we win," she said in response to questions about the team's prospects. "When we win."
