It was a day for exorcising the ghosts of Hillsborough and the memories of another press conference, writes Dan Keenan in Belfast.
On an October day in 2003, an exhausted and apparently reluctant Gen John de Chastelain took to the podium to say what little he could about an IRA act of decommissioning which had taken place a short time earlier. Fresh from a bog somewhere in Ireland, there was still mud on his shoes.
David Trimble was not impressed either by what he said or how he said it, and confident hopes of a breakthrough were dead within the hour.
Yesterday, the general's shoes were as polished as his performance. Paraphrasing Churchill, he quipped: "Never in history have so few been photographed by so many for so long," before announcing he was "waiting for the starting gun".
Remembering that the pistol had been taken out of Irish politics, he corrected himself quickly. "Let me rephrase that, I'm waiting for someone to tell me to start."
And with that he set about meeting the desire of victims to be told in clear terms that the IRA threat was gone while sparing the IRA's sensitivities about anything that smacked of surrender.
Brilliantly stating the obvious, he explained that getting armed groups to put aside their arms voluntarily without a perception of humiliation and blame "is not simple".
Whether it could be done at all seemed debatable. The risk remains that neither gunman nor victim will be satisfied and that compromise will be seen to be the worst option.
That said, de Chastelain's performance was assured and confident and at times even light-hearted. It was a feat given that he had just completed his personal inspection of each and every IRA firearm as well as a selection of flame-throwers, surface-to-air missiles and rocket-propelled grenades.
Despite the military jargon, he painted a startling and vivid word picture, a stark contrast with the bland generalities he felt forced to employ at Hillsborough less than two years previously.
The IRA's action was a milestone, he ventured, and one that might encourage loyalists to take their own steps down the same road.
Straining to hear the machine-gun rattle of reporters' questions, he was forced to admit to a certain hearing loss.
"Fifty years of playing the bagpipes," he explained to The Irish Times privately afterwards, pointing to one ear, "and 40 years of soldiering in this ear".
All the while, the Rev Harold Good and Fr Alec Reid looked on wisely.
The point was, said the former Methodist president, not the mechanics of the decommissioning process, but its outcome.
The muddy shoes press conference had failed to impress David Trimble enough for him to take republicans at their word.
The polished performance here, with full clerical support, seemed not to move Ian Paisley. Rocking contentedly in his chair at DUP headquarters, he insisted little had changed.