It has taken a long time, says the president of the club as he surveys the squad of players celebrating promotion to the third tier of English football.
After five seasons of near-misses and play-off finals agony, the Grecians have been promoted to League One.
With two games left in the League Two title race, the club is aiming to overtake Forest Green.
They will face Derby County next season, who are still in administration after overspending.
The way in which their clubs have been run by their owners has caused fans of both clubs to desert them.
Tagg says that the players and the fans know what the club is about.
They know we haven't got money to throw at everything, but it's firm, it's solid, and you can see that every day we take little steps and this is where it ends up. This is where we are and you should end up there.
Tagg and other fans led a takeover of the business in 2003 which created the current status.
The club has focused on developing their young players with the aim of getting them into the first team and selling them on.
The club is likely to get another million dollars from the sale of Watkins if they stay up. They sold him to the Bees in the summer of 2017.
The club has banked close to a million dollars over the years for players such as Jordan Storey, David Wheeler and Tom Nicholls, as well as the likes of Matt Grimes, Ethan Ampadu andJoel Randall.
Andrew Barge says that the club often has to sell its best players to keep it going.
It is always a worry that you are not going to be able to replace those players that go on to bigger and better things.
The recruitment of Matt Taylor in the summer shows it isn't just the players he brings through. He has an eye for a player that he can bring into the club and improve and mold them into a great team that has had superb cohesiveness this season.
It's very rare to see a team as consistent as the ones at Exeter City.
The club has a policy that Matt Taylor is a prime example of.
Taylor stepped up from his role as boss of the Under 23s when Paul Tisdale left in the summer of 2018, a former player who helped win promotion to League One in 2009.
He picked players discarded by other clubs and gave them a new lease of life, even though he continued to blood young players.
Tim Dieng joined on a free transfer after back-to-back promotions and has scored 14 goals.
After a tough time at Colchester, Jevani Brown has added some flair in his attack and Sam Stubbs has recovered from a knee injury that delayed his debut by 10 months.
Taylor says that they work long and hard to bring players into the club.
We only get that type of player if there is something wrong physically or mentally with their game, or they have been through the mill.
You have to bring these players to this football club, you have to find them, but you have to be opportunist.
You have to make them believe what we are about and then they have to buy into it.
The investment in new players, alongside the foundation of the core group of academy products which you see on the pitch, has been our first team this season.
Matt Jay is the epitome of a club better than any other.
After coming through the youth ranks, he made his debut at 17 and took four years to establish himself.
A technically gifted but relatively small attacker is what other clubs would have lost patience with. It has proven that they had someone who could make it.
Jay has scored 44 goals in three seasons, including the winner against Barrow on Tuesday, which saw City return to League One for the first time in a decade.
There have been 11 or 12 academy graduates in or around the first-team squad at any given time, so it proves you can do it this way, says Jay.
You can see that they've chucked fortunes at it time and time again, and they are 16th in League Two.
We do it differently here and it works. You are going to see the next crop coming through, so it is an honor to be a part of it.
It will benefit everyone at the club now that we are in League One.
The future of the club will not be put at risk, which is why the fans contemplate trips to the likes of Derby, Ipswich, Pompey and perhaps fierce rivals.
If the success of similar-sized clubs such as Accrington Stanley, Cheltenham Town and Morecambe is anything to go by, then the Grecians may surprise a few people in League One.
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