For the Cronulla Sharks, this is it.
We are about to find out whether the men from the Shire are premiership contenders or pretenders, and whether they have managed a Built Different approach to the one they had in 2023 against top teams.
There is really no way around the bluntness of that statement, as harsh as it might seem for a team who sit on top of the table after nine rounds of action.
I'm not going to sit here and claim they have played nobody at all like some seem to be doing. If you're going to argue two wins against their bogey side the Canberra Raiders, a victory in Auckland over the New Zealand Warriors and a thrashing of the admittedly inconsistent North Queensland Cowboys is “nothing” then I also have a bridge to sell you.
But being realistic about it, the Sharks are yet to play most of the serious premiership contenders.
That starts this week, with Craig Fitzgibbon's side tackling the game's toughest road trip in the Victorian capital against the Melbourne Storm, before heading to Magic Roud where they face the Sydney Roosters. Then it's on to play three-time defending champions the Penrith Panthers, the Parramatta Eels with (likely) Mitchell Moses and Clint Gutherson back on the paddock, before they finish off a horror five weeks back in Brisbane against the Brisbane Broncos.
And yes, the Origin window kicks off at the end of this five-week spell, but if the Sharks can emerge with three or even four wins from the run ahead, then it will be time to start taking them very seriously.
What Cronulla can't afford though - unless they want to prove the seemingly popular but potentially wrong narrative correct - is to go through this period looking like a different side to the one which has dominated the opening nine weeks of the competition.
Funnily enough, outside of their only loss so far this year against the Wests Tigers in Round 3, the Sharks had their worst performance of the year in the local derby against the St George Illawarra Dragons.
Appalling conditions and emerging with a win aside, the black, white and blue's attack was poor, their decision-making rushed and evidently, they will need to be a lot better than that moving forward.
That said, it may have been the game they needed to have before the run of matches ahead to reset things.
What didn't change in that game though - and what has been a trend all season for the Shire-based side - is the metres they have been making from the back of the park.
The common theme in recent years - frankly since the arrival of star halfback Nicho Hynes - has been that the Sharks are short a big forward of becoming a premiership contender. It's something the club higher-ups seem to agree with as well after they managed to add Addin Fonua-Blake to the roster for 2025 and beyond.
The Dally M prop of the year's release from the New Zealand Warriors on compassionate grounds has the undoubted potential to flip the Sharks' fortunes on their head.
But that would only be true if the current crop - led by the ever-improving Thomas Hazelton, among others - doesn't find a way to maintain the rage they have built up over the first two months of this year's competition.
And while the forwards will no doubt play an important role in that happening, their job - as it has been already this year - will be made a whole lot easier by the continuing outstanding performances of the back five.
While the back five brought with it Cronulla's biggest selection question during the pre-season, that being how to fit Kayal Iro into the side, coach Fitzgibbon has now answered that and the Sharks' back five, locked in cement, are playing fantastically.
Over their incredible run of three straight premierships, one of the constants for the Penrith Panthers has been the excellent metre-eating of their outside backs. It really is the key to modern rugby league. Gain metres from the back at the start of your sets, do the hard yards, and the rest becomes easy for forwards to dominate the middle of sets and halves to have time and space at the end of them.
Well, the Sharks have learnt from that model and applied it to their own game to start 2024. Ronaldo Mulitalo, Sione Katoa, Iro, William Kennedy and Jesse Ramien have all been fantastic on that front.
Katoa (157 metres per game), Mulitalo (153 metres per game), Kennedy (122 metres per game), Iro (176 metres per game) and Ramien (148 metres per game) have all been the true indicators of success for the Sharks this year, laying the platform for their teammates to play around them.
There is a reason it has worked for the Panthers, and is now a reason it is working for the Sharks. That level of effort and intensity is simply hard to match, and even in a diabolical game against the St George Illawarra Dragons on Sunday, four of the five still cracked 100 metres.
The work of their outside men has made the Sharks Built Different in 2024, but that isn't to say it will be quite as easy in the weeks to come against the competition heavyweights.
Arguably though, it's more important for the Sharks than any other given their reliance on Hynes to provide points, and their perceived lack of top tier talent in the forwards.
But for Cronulla to come out the other side of this run with their record somewhat intact, it simply can't be allowed to change.
You know what else is Built Different? The PointsBet App!
