THE thing they all kept referring back to was the carpark at Newcastle - the sharing of champagne on the tarmac behind Hunter Stadium, to celebrate winning the Premier's Plate.
There was a clutch of Western Sydney Wanderers officials there in a huddle on Friday night, marking the triumph before the return drive down the F3.
Less than 36 hours later one of their number was dead, taken in an unspeakable manner, and a confusion of emotions had enveloped the Wanderers at what should have been the start of a fortnight of pride and excitement.
The death on Sunday of Rod Allen, the club's media manager and previously the same for the Socceroos, has resonated across and around Sydney - in part for the distressing manner of his passing but more pertinently a reflection of his personality.
At a club run on a tiny staff, and at the centre of such a remarkable story, Allen had become a key figure in a short time.
The players were left bewildered as much as anyone. On Saturday he was prepping them for media appearances across radio and TV, in the wake of winning a trophy.
Sombre Western Sydney Wanderers players at training yesterday. Picture: Simon Chillingworth
On Sunday, he wasn't.
"It's surreal and it hurts," said chairman Lyall Gorman, of whom Allen spoke glowingly in private.
"We've lost more than a work colleague, he was a friend of us as individuals and a friend of the game.
"He was so proud on Friday night, but he also knew that wasn't the moment for a huge celebration and he was planning for this week."
The word surreal seemed most apt of all in the Rooty Hill sunshine yesterday.
Rod Allen at the 2012 London Olympics.
This isn't a club with a decade of heritage to call upon, let alone a century, when tragedy of a real-life kind comes calling.
But it is also a club that has had to make everything up as it went along for the 363 days it has officially been in existence; "been climbing mountains since day one" in the words of Gorman.
Tomorrow is exactly a year since Western Sydney's formal establishment. It shouldn't have been marked like this.
Yesterday the players were back in training, the incongruity of it all highlighted by the fact that there remains a semi-final to play the weekend after next.
There is no blueprint to prepare for a cup final and a funeral in the same week.
"Somehow we have to find coping mechanisms and keep the club moving forward towards the semi-final," Gorman said.
So soon after his death it's too early to know what tribute might be paid to Allen before the semi-final, though the club's Red and Black Bloc supporter group are discussing their own appropriate gesture.
But for all that Rudyard Kipling's line about meeting triumph and disaster as equals is an empty comparison in these circumstances, the players will respond in the way they know how - and the way they believe Allen would approve.
"It gives us more motivation as well throughout the rest of the season," captain Michael Beauchamp said.
"Everything can get taken away from you so fast and that's why I think the motivation's there even more so now because ... you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.
"You can basically only take for what is now and that's why we're going out there with a bit more of that in the back of the head."
A memorial service will be held for Western Sydney Wanderers Media Manager Rod Allen at the SCG Members' Stand from 1pm on Monday, April 8
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