It wasn't really like the movies. Ewen McKenzie wasn't spending Monday cleaning out his office, stashing trophies in cardboard boxes and staring wistfully back at his field of dreams as players gave him a guard of honour in the carpark.

The Reds' Super Rugby season may be over, courtesy of a brutal Crusaders outfit, but the work is only just beginning for the new Wallaby coach. There are reviews to be done with Queensland and groundwork to be completed in his new role.

But the reality of what has transpired at Ballymore over the past four years hasn't been lost on McKenzie by any stretch. He looks back with justifiable pride on the house he has been instrumental in building, one new coach Richard Graham must now uphold.

Three finals campaigns and one Super Rugby title are the quantifiable achievements of a rugby side plucked from oblivion in the nick of time. The restoration of the game itself in Queensland, as well as the success of the playing group, will remain an enduring legacy.

He remembers the maelstrom into which he flew on one of the first days after his recruitment. With season upon season of failure then par for the course, he found himself with everything to prove to a rugby public deserting the state's only elite side in droves.

"I remember the day I arrived here, walking into the first press conference. The Courier-Mail had a poll that said 'Will Ewen McKenzie make a difference at the Reds?'," McKenzie recalls.

"About 92 per cent of people said 'No'. I thought 'it's going to be hard work here, hard to win the Queensland public over'.

"But that's just where rugby was at the time. Nine out of 10 people thought I couldn't make a difference. They'd seen a string of coaches and thought it was terminal. People were starting to cash in their memberships.

"We probably turned that around in the nick of time, because rugby was teetering at that point."

The talking points that used to define the Reds in the bad old days are, for the most part, off the table. The 92-3 loss to the Bulls in 2007 seems a relic, while small milestones were slowly created and expanded as McKenzie shaped his young and ambitious group.

"We took very small bites. In that first year, we were looking to get past that one-game winning streak. The Reds hadn't won two games in a row for about five years. We took on that little challenge and ended up having a couple of eight-game winning streaks," McKenzie said.

"We built on little targets that were manageable. When you have a young team, you keep it simple so they can focus."

McKenzie's first two priorities were turning around a losing culture and trying to retain players, an area in which the Reds struggled mightily as players sought safety from what they considered a sinking ship.

The strategy was effective, with the result a Reds side that always had a crack for a rapidly expanding membership base, culminating with a stunning 2011 title victory over the Crusaders at Suncorp Stadium.

"I think we managed to turn the team and organisation around and made it profitable and interesting and supportable. It made rugby supporters proud again," McKenzie said.

"As much as it's about team, it's nice to walk the streets or go to a function and have supporters talk about the game enthusiastically.

"Nobody expects the team to win every week. It's just not possible. But the Reds have given really good value to the Suncorp crowd, good value in terms of winning and losing.

"We've won a lot of games there, a lot of memories. Those things stick with you."

The heavy loss to the Crusaders in the first week of the finals wasn't the way McKenzie envisaged bowing out. But he doesn't believe that defeat will forever colour his time in charge of a Reds side that entertained, engaged and eventually tasted success.

"We always like to be there at the end but there's so many more highlights than low-lights. I don't have to dwell on the weekend. They were good, we weren't. That happens every now and then," McKenzie said.

Perhaps the ultimate compliment for McKenzie was a former Waratahs player and coach being embraced by the notoriously parochial locals.

And the prospect of a statue of the man they call 'Link' outside of Suncorp Stadium, the scene of his greatest triumph with the Reds?

"Unless you are born here, I don't think you get those sort of opportunities," McKenzie said.

A realist to the end. But as 2011 showed, stranger things have happened.