Gould tried to break the news to Mansour, even telling him he had to accept the offer, that it was too good to pass up. But the bearded winger was having none of it.

Mansour wanted to stay.

He told Gould he would settle for less to stay and to make him an offer. Gould said the Panthers simply couldn’t find that sort of money.

Mansour begged him to stay and Gould found some money.

In the end, Mansour settled for barely half the amount he could have earned in Canberra.

But he was happy. He was home.

“Do I remember that conversation with Gus? I’ll never forget it,” Mansour tells The Sun-Herald. “We were sitting in the player dugout at the stadium. It was just me and him. The negotiations had kept going back and forth with the club and Gus said to me, ‘You should take this Canberra deal, it’s a great deal’.

“But I kept telling him, ‘I don’t want to leave’ and ‘Do what you can, I love this club too much’.

“Penrith had handed me my dream to play in the NRL. I wanted to repay the club for giving me that.

“I got emotional. So did Gus. There were tears in the eyes. Everyone was telling me to go to Canberra. Gus did. So did my manager. Everyone except me.”

Mansour and James Tedesco were photographed hopping off a plane from Canberra where they had just been given the Raiders’ grand tour by coach Ricky Stuart. The pair looked sheepish as they made their way out of one of the domestic terminals at Sydney Airport.

Tedesco ended up signing a $1.8 million deal with Canberra before backflipping to remain with Wests Tigers. The deal lasted three days.

Mansour never agreed to anything but, like Tedesco, told Canberra he would remain in Sydney.

He still remembers sitting next to Tedesco on the flight home when they asked each other what they were thinking.

“Teddy was asking me if I was going to sign,” Mansour says. “I had a feeling he would have gone there had I gone there. I never asked him. That’s just a gut feel.

Tedesco was reminded of the pair’s trip together this week, and clearly would have enjoyed playing alongside the winger, saying: “He is a nice bloke, a funny bloke, and every time you get around him he makes you smile.”

For Mansour though, there was always something holding him back from moving to Canberra.

“I had a phone call with ‘Sticky’ [Stuart]. I told him I had all my family here and how it was holding me back,” Mansour says.

“I respected Sticky as a bloke and as a coach. We got along really well. I later called him, I said, ‘Mate, I don’t want to beat around the bush, I’m staying at Penrith. Thanks for your interest’.”

Mansour gave up more than $500,000 over the three years of the deal to stay.

Raiders boss Don Furner remembers it well too. It was a tough period for the Raiders. But he appreciated Mansour going to the effort of contacting him personally. Furner says he can count on the one hand the number of players who have actually bothered to break the bad news themselves.

It says a lot about Mansour’s upbringing – and it says a lot about his loyalty.

“It was tough call because I knew how much I was giving up,” Mansour says. “I’ve always been loyal. I’ll do anything for my mates and teammates. If someone does right by me, I want to repay them tenfold.

“As soon as I laced up my boots for the first time as a kid, all I wanted to do was play in the NRL.

“I thought that dream was going to be with Souths. I wanted nothing more than to play for South Sydney. I came through their juniors, had a lot of mates there. We had a lot of success in the under-20s.

“Then Penrith gave me my dream. This is home.”

Born to a Lebanese father and Portuguese mother whose hearts were crushed when their son chose rugby league over football – Mansour was a talented striker who started out at Lakemba Sports, the one-time home of Tim Cahill – the 30-year-old is the longest-serving Panther involved in Sunday’s grand final.

Mansour is off contract at the end of next season and knows the club will need to weigh up experience versus youth.

Charlie Staines has a huge future and already knocked back Canterbury to recommit to the Panthers. He’s known as the “Ferrari” because of his blistering speed. If Staines is the flashy Italian sports car, Mansour is the trusty Holden that shows no signs of burning out.

Staines won’t find it easy to unseat the veteran. Mansour has bounced back into form this year along with fellow winger Brian To’o. The Penrith wide men are not the biggest, but have huge engines and have been key in getting the Panthers on the front foot in the club’s 17-game win streak by taking the first and second hit-ups in the tackle count. They were awesome last Saturday against Souths.

Playing outside rookie centre Stephen Crichton has also given Mansour a new lease of life.

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“I’ll keep playing as long as my body allows me to play,” says Mansour, who has overcome some shocking injuries in recent years, including an ACL he ruptured while on a Kangaroos tour and multiple facial fractures suffered in a collision in 2018.

He might be the Panthers’ longest-serving player but sadly Mansour remains a shocking singer and the only Penrith player to botch the words to the team song – despite the team singing it 17 straight games in a row this season.

“It was my 150th, I had to lead the team song, but I crumbled under the pressure,” he says. “The boys were squirting water in my face and I ended up going too fast. I stuffed it up.”

A small stuff up in the scheme of things, and one easily forgotten if he gets to sing the song alonside the the Provan-Summons Trophy on Sunday night.