Peter Gentle admitted his Hull FC players had reached Wembley the hard way after they booked a Challenge Cup rugby league final showdown against Wigan with a 16-12 win over Warrington.
After just 15 minutes of action on Sunday, it looked like the Wolves were going to be defending their title against Wigan as Australian pair Joel Monaghan and Trent Waterhouse gave the holders an early 8-0 lead.
But Hull grabbed two quickfire tries themselves through Tom Lineham and Richard Whiting to lead 10-8 at halftime before Aaron Heremaia gave them some breathing space after the interval.
Warrington didn't lie down and a Ben Currie try in the 76th minute made for a nervy few finale, but Hull held out to head back to Wembley, having lost the 2008 Challenge Cup final to St Helens.
"We don't do things the easy way at all, do we? We keep finding hard ways to do things," said Gentle, who had been assistant at Wests Tigers before taking up the role of coach at Hull in 2011.
"But what a gutsy performance from the players. We lost Shannon McDonnell early but I thought our kicking game and defence were exceptional.
"The last few minutes were not good for my health but all that matters is that we hung on and came out on top in the end.
"We believed we could go to Wembley and, now we are, it is a dream come true."
Wolves headed into the clash hoping for more of the same having won the Challenge Cup in three of the past four years. But it wasn't to be as Hull came roaring back.
Now Warrington coach Tony Smith is determined not to let Wembley slip through his fingers a second time as he turns his attentions to getting there with a Super League grand final appearance.
"We were great early for the first 15 minutes but we just lost our way after that," said Smith.
"We stopped controlling the ball in the way that we were early on and that is when Hull really got their tails up and they ended up dominating pretty much the next 60 minutes and we left ourselves with a little bit too much to do late on.
"But I can't fault the effort of my players. They have sore heads about not getting back to Wembley but we have got to earn the right and we didn't quite go about it as we perhaps should have.
"We will concentrate on Super League now and give it all we have got. We would have liked to have been participating in both Wembley finals but it wasn't to be.
"Hull deserved that right but it has probably made us a bit more determined to not miss out in the grand final now."
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