Dave Wessels was beaming when he sat down for last night's post match press conference.
The rookie head coach had trouble recalling a better win in his time at the Force, when asked.
"I thought the most important thing about tonight is that we responded to what was a pretty poor performance last week," he said.
"How we were always going to measure that was our intensity and in just talking to Hodgo - there's no doubt our intensity won us that game.
"I think that's - I've had a lot of special wins with the Force - but that ranks right up there because of the context of where we've come from.
"We've travelled around the world in the last two weeks and we had a six day turnaround into a team that actually come off a bye.
"For our team to come out with the energy and intensity that they did was a real credit to the boys - it makes me pretty proud."
Plenty of eyes were on a subpar Reds performance last night but the Force deserve plenty of credit.
They won the physicality battle - at the tackle and the breakdown - and used the boot of Peter Grant to repeatedly turn pressure into points.
"That probably just talks to the intensity of the game," Wessels said.
"All of the contact areas, we did well and we just stayed at it.
"There were early games in the season where we stuck to the plan for most of the game and then released the pressure at key moments.
"I thought tonight and in BA the two things that stood out for me was that we maintained that pressure.
"It takes 60 or 70 minutes to tell on the opposition but I was proud that we stuck to the plan for most of the game and ultimately got the reward."
Their season is still alive but with the Hurricanes waiting around the corner, Wessels posed the million dollar question
"We now have to go back-to-back - which is something we haven't been able to do for some time.
"How do we manufacture that performance off the back of a win - not only after losing?"
