It's 5am the day after the ACT Brumbies suffered grand final heartbreak.
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Players are spread around the bar at the club's old Griffith headquarters, licking their wounds after a one-point loss to the Canterbury Crusaders in 2000.
Bleary-eyed and still drowning their sorrows, some understandably thought they were seeing things when coach Eddie Jones arrived before the sun had emerged.
What happened next, Joe Roff says, is the reason why the Brumbies were able to get grand final redemption the following year. It's also why Wallabies great Roff is convinced Jones can finally taste World Cup glory on Saturday night.
"The whole squad was still there and we just watched Eddie walk down the side alley," Roff says of that night 19 years ago.
"He had his briefcase under his arm, walked into his office and turned the light on. We all just looked at each other and shook our heads, but he was starting to prepare for the next season.
"Continuous improvement is almost a compulsion for him. I can still say to this day, I've never gone into a final with more self belief than I did the next year.
"That was four years of Eddie building, he built that self belief."
Jones' impact at the Brumbies feels like a lifetime ago, but those who know him best say the foundations for England's charge to the World Cup final against South Africa were forged in Canberra more than 20 years ago.
Take, for example, the similarities between the Brumbies of the late 1990s and England when Jones took the reins four years ago.
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The Brumbies won just three games in his first season after the departure of Rod Macqueen at the end of 1997.
Over the next four years Jones rebuilt the Brumbies, losing the final in 2000 and then winning the club's first title in 2001.
Fast-forward to England's disastrous World Cup in 2015, bundled out of their home tournament before the quarter-finals. Who does the cashed-up RFU call to save them? Eddie, of course.
Since then he's been unbeaten against Australia, led England to their first Grand Slam in 13 years, won a record-equaling 18 Tests in a row and had to fend away critics when his job was on the line 18 months ago.
"Eddie gets the best out of everyone around him wherever he goes," Roff said.
"His work ethic is unrivaled. He was like that at the Brumbies - you could never have just a Plan A.
"He pieced together the patterns that he knew would have an impact. We got to a stage where we would know the patterns of play we'd be running to four or five phases.
"He's had this England team for a long time now, and you can see they believe in his coaching. It's the same belief he had back here in Canberra in his Brumbies days."
The sharp-tongued master tactician will get his chance to become a head coach world champion in Yokohama this weekend.
EDDIE'S WORLD CUP 'TRAUMA'
He's been on this stage before: leading the Wallabies into the final in 2003 only to be beaten by England, then partnering with Jake White to help South Africa topple England in 2007.
"I didn't realise what an effect [losing in 2003] had on me until possibly 2007," Jones said. "You think everything is alright but you lose a World Cup final and it's a difficult experience. You don't reflect well, which I didn't after the last World Cup, then you carry some things with you that aren't always positive. They can be negative and they have an effect on how you approach your job.
"I was just too desperate to win and you can't be desperate for things. After you lose a World Cup, you want it to happen like that because you want to get rid of that memory. It doesn't happen like that. You've got to work again and build it up. Sometimes you're not as patient building it up.
"It happens with players as well. If you've experienced a significant trauma in your sporting career, it takes times to get over it."
So what sets Jones apart from the rest? He has managed to be an elite-level coach for the past 22 years, having stints in Japan, Australia, England and South Africa.
Maybe it's because he's willing to think out of the box, even in the biggest weeks before the biggest games.
Like when he opened up his doors to Canberra Raiders coach Ricky Stuart in the days leading up to England's thumping win against the Wallabies in the quarter-final.
Or the call he put out to Matt Giteau, a two-time Wallabies World Cup finalist, this week asking if he could help England prepare for the clash against the Springboks.
Giteau didn't go, but last week he added scrumhalf Genki Okoshi for preparations to play the All Blacks.
"So Eddie said [to Okoshi] 'I need you to look at Aaron Smith, watch the way he plays, tackles, defends, talks, communicates - I need you to study him on Sunday and then on Monday come in looking like Aaron Smith'," Giteau said on the Fox Sports rugby podcast.
"He even said, 'I want you to cut your hair like Aaron Smith'. It was a potential throwaway line, but come Monday Genki shaved his hair."
Roff adds: "Sometimes he genuinely doesn't care, but he wants you to feel on edge anyway. He knows how people tick, he knows how to play the psychological game."
And the final word from Jones: "You've got this opportunity to change people's lives through the ability to play rugby. It's a gift isn't it. I know how we want to do it, so we've just got to go ahead and do it now."