Ahead of our Sky Bet Championship opener on Monday night, Brian Barry-Murphy spoke to the assembled press and media at Cardiff City Stadium.
"We can't wait.” the boss began. "The length of the build-up means as you get closer, the excitement grows. I think you can feel a real buzz in the city for the game, and we're all looking forward to it.
"We're under no illusions about how tough the game is going to be, but that's probably what makes it so exciting. The reward of what the players did last season is to have games of this calibre, so we'll give it everything we have, and have a right go at it.
"In line with a lot of last season, that game against them last season is in the past, and we're very much looking forward to the future. We have a real hunger and appetite to improve on what we did last season."
A sizeable crowd is expected at CCS for Monday's all-Welsh clash, with Brian explaining just how important a role the home support can play.
He said: "We saw it a few times last season; when we get support of that volume, the night games in particular, the atmosphere is going to be rocking, I'm sure. We'll try and give them every reason to make it even more of an enjoyable evening.
"The energy from the supporters is incredible, and hopefully what we'll see on Monday is an atmosphere that befits the stadium and the Club. We'll try and do our part by producing a performance that gives us a chance to win.
"Cardiff City feels like the biggest club in the world, to me. With all due respect, the people in North America are irrelevant to me - the people of Cardiff are the only ones that matter to us - and the people in Malaysia, our bosses. We always try and play for the supporters, and the focus is totally on ourselves."
City returned to the second tier at the first time of asking after a successful 2025/26 season, with Brian full of excitement at what lies ahead.
"I think one of the beauties of this season is for a lot of us, we're going into the unknown. We see that as being very exciting, and something that we're all really looking forward to.
"Our feeling is that we can surprise a lot of people. We're not naive, and we're under no illusions about how difficult the season is going to be, but the size of the challenge improves the size of our excitement. The bigger the challenge, the more we look forward to it."
The boss also provided a fitness update ahead of Monday night's fixture, with several players missing last week's Carabao Cup clash through injury.
"Rubin Colwill is doing really well, and making great progress. He has a chance [of playing on Monday]. Dylan Lawlor hasn't trained with us this week, so at this point I would say he's unlikely. Calum Chambers is back in parts of training, so we'll see how he progresses towards the weekend. Because of the game being on Monday, that gives us a good chance."