Wearing red, white and black, a large throng of long-suffering North Sydney Bears supporters cheered ARL chairman Peter V'Landys, booed Manly, and burst into spontaneous renditions of the club's anthem 'Stand Aside' at Norths Cammeray.
The queue for celebratory drinks at the main bar was slightly longer than your average Thursday lunchtime as the bingo-playing regulars watched on.
But when you've had to wait nearly a quarter of a century for your club to get back to the NRL, an extra five minutes means nothing.
"26 years in the making, the people who have stuck solid with this football club deserve this day and it's great that we can give them that dream again," chief executive Gareth Holmes said.
As fathers hugged their sons and daughters, club great Greg Florimo stood next to Holmes at the bar and punched the air in jubilation.
A true believer, Florimo has led the charge to reinstate the Bears since they were forced into an unhappy marriage with Manly to create the Northern Eagles in 1999 then turfed out of the NRL and banished to the lower grades.
"It's been a long time coming, having tried and failed, tried and failed, and now seeing it succeed for all the fans and the ex-players and supporters, it's just tremendous," Florimo said.
Even before Cook uttered the words "Perth Bears", Florimo was still nervous, chewing his fingernails as he focused on the big screen.
He politely declined interview requests, not wanting to tempt fate just in case there was a final twist in the tail and there was no path back to the NRL.
"That's 25 years of anxiety," Florimo said.
"We've had so many false starts, my own mum has called me four or five times over the last two years saying, 'well done' and I'd have to say, 'not yet'."
The longstanding drawback to an expansion side adopting the Bears' colours and branding has been whether new fans would be enamoured with a club that wasn't theirs and that came with its own baggage and its own history.
But the scenes of jubilation in Sydney on Thursday should give reason for optimism.
The Bears diehards who have watched their team soldier on through the lower grades will ensure that come 2027, Perth will have the strongest away support on the east coast.
"There were 10 years where I didn't watch rugby league after the Bears exited the competition - I went and watched rugby union instead," said Paul McAuley, who has supported the Bears since the 1980s.
"The idea of watching the Bears in the NRL seemed so distant, I really thought I'd never see the day.
"There's still a part of me that doesn't quite believe it's happening but this is a testament to guys like Greg Florimo, who never gave up."
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