A new trainer has been a while coming and, privately anyway, we have had the view that a quiet Jockey Club insistence on a southern hemisphere-based trainer as the next expatriate flew in the face of reality.
But we have to admit that, in Richard Gibson, the club appears to have been rewarded for its patience, or stubbornness - take your pick.
Since David Oughton's departure in late 2006, arguably a vacancy for a new trainer has existed and various suitable candidates have come and gone. We believe Melbourne's Peter Moody would have jumped at the chance to train in Hong Kong had it been offered any time in the two years following Oughton's departure. Times change and Moody is now the leading trainer in Melbourne, with a conveyor belt of top horses rolling through the yard, including world champion sprinter Black Caviar, and nothing short of a midnight kidnapping at gunpoint would remove him from his post now. A sorry miss for Hong Kong.
But there was a view within the club that a certain northern-southern hemisphere balance had to be maintained, despite the fact the handful of northern hemisphere-based trainers applying to come here either did not have a strong enough profile to make them an attractive proposition, due their age, experience or level of success, or had one that made them downright unattractive for the same reasons.
In addition, the insistence on a new expat from Europe ignored the level of success achieved by southern hemisphere trainers here coming from a similar scenario of speed-oriented racing and training and racing on flat circle tracks, instead of glorious open gallops.
Four years plus down the track, the club can feel quietly smug the wait has been worthwhile.
British-born Gibson is the right kind of age, at 41, has a solid performance profile that includes Group One wins in France and on the international stage with Doctor Dino, and a background that looks likely to make him an ideal candidate.