Mark Durkan may well have been SDLP leader for the past year, but this weekend he both looked and sounded it.
He inherited the leadership last year at a conference which was more of a farewell for the retiring Hume and Mallon and a celebration of the Belfast Agreement triumph than anything else. It was with a shaking hand that the new leader took the podium last time to make his inaugural leader's address.
This weekend it was different.
There was some evidence of stage fright as the party chairman, Alex Attwood, set the scene for Mr Durkan's entry, but it was dispelled with the applause, and he was soon into his stride with gravitas and determination. Last year he was handed the leadership; this time he made it his own.
John Hume's presence was low-key, Seamus Mallon was in the US and Eddie McGrady was unable to attend.
There was no attempt to press the feel-good buttons, no black-and-white archives from civil rights days in Derry, no videos bearing smiling congratulatory Clintons or Kennedys, no optimistic rock anthems from U2. Nobody sang We Shall Overcome - surely an SDLP first.
The political climate was colder thanks to suspension, crisis and the omnipresent electoral threat from Sinn Féin.
It was as if the party, used to being branded as doomed for many of the past 20 years, got back to the business of pushing boulders back up hills after some serious landslides.
The new leader may well have lost his other title of Deputy First Minister, but there was a distinct notion among the delegates that this particular cloud was indeed silver-lined.
Now at least he was free to concentrate on his main job, that of leading the party and fighting the good fight against private armies, wrecking unionists, double-talking Shinners and British governments.
The SDLP is the backbone of the Good Friday agreement, he told delegates.
But in between the lines of his intensely personal address he made it clear they were also its conscience and its heart.
This agreement was not just fashioned to facilitate warring political traditions, it would serve as the template for the new Ireland too, Mr Durkan said. Having wooed his audience away from the troubles of the moment, he pointed to the barely perceptible glow on the horizon.
Taking no small risk with high-sounding rhetoric, he ventured: "Work with me and we will write a brand-new script for a brand-new society. Walk with me and in this new century we will reach a new country."
Such a messianic line would sound corny from most politicians. On this occasion the faithful seemed prepared to pick up their crosses and follow him.