Central North's time in the Caldwell Cup might have been short-lived, but the Kookaburras showed in Tamworth on the weekend that they can compete with the heavyweights of country rugby.
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They will now have to fight their way back into the top tier again after being relegated down to the Richardson Shield.
It was a near thing - one pesky bonus point.
Between them and Mid North Coast for fifth across the two Caldwell Cup pools and a spot in the Richardson Shield final, they had a better for and against than the Axemen. But they had managed to pick up a bonus point in one of their games and so ended up getting through.
Whether they won or not, based on how the draw was structured for the weekend, making the final would have been enough for the Kookaburras to stay in the top tier.
A disappointed but proud co-captain Daniel Kahl reflected that probably just a "couple of little moments" hurt them in their pool games against Illawarra and Central Coast on Saturday.
Against Illawarra first-up, with the scrum picking up where it left off last year - twice they marched Illawarra back 20m - they led 14-10 at half-time.
But two yellow cards within the space of a couple of minutes early in the second half put them on the backfoot and they were never really able to get any momentum back and went down 25-14 in the end.
Kahl said being shorter games than they usually play (they were only 25 minute halves as opposed to 40 minutes), they talked about playing a territory-based game and "then having a crack" as long as they were "in the right part of the field".
"And we did that for patches but probably our discipline for this standard let us down," he said.
"And going down to 13 men, that period of the game is where the game was lost effectively."
They did rally well in defence to hold Illawarra to just the one try during that period.
"The effort to still try and dig out way out of that period of the game was really quite special from the boys. They dug right in and we defended tenaciously to keep ourselves in the game," Kahl said.
It left them needing to then beat defending Caldwell Cup champions Central Coast to have any hope of playing off for the top silverware. Or at least if they couldn't get the win pick up a bonus point, which would have put them into the Richardson Shield final.
But they managed neither, going down 18-nil.
They had their opportunities in that game.
Late in the first half, and trailing 10-nil, they had a good period of attack in the final minutes and came centimetres from scoring.
They had another promising passage early in the second half, but after it broke down Central Coast virtually went coast-to-coast to go ahead 15-nil.
Then in the 13th minute they were ruled to be held up, only to from the drop-out concede a penalty.
"Similar to the Illawarra game, there's a couple of moments in that game where we could have controlled things better and come out of it with something that would have made the difference" Kahl said.
"But it's a good learning experience. There's a bunch of extra guys now that have been part of the program and understand what it's about, and hopefully we keep building."
They then had to back up on Sunday for back-to-back play-off games against New England and Western Plains.
After beating New England 29-5 they then went down to Western Plains 10-7 in another thriller.
Not the way the Kookaburras wanted to finish, Kahl thought the weekend was "still a step forward".
