Before Wednesday night, Ben Hunt had already done a lot of things in rugby league.
He made the leap from under-20s superstar to first-grade gun, leading one of the most exciting teams of the past decade to a grand final.
He won finals games, Origin series, a World Cup, and earned a $1-million-a-season contract for his individual brilliance as a player.
But he was perhaps most well-known, however unfairly, as the NRL's Herschelle Gibbs — he dropped the grand final.
To be crystal clear, the Brisbane Broncos would not have reached the 2015 NRL grand final without him and he is not solely to blame for that loss, but it's silly to pretend dropping the ball on the tryline to surrender golden point wasn't a massive moment.
One wild moment is easier to remember than a lifetime of solid performances.
And it would seem he agreed.
Watching one of the nicest guys in rugby league drop that ball, then the countless slow-motion replays, you really could pinpoint the second when his heart ripped in half.
For years after that, Hunt wasn't the same player.
His confidence was clearly rattled and his decision-making on the field — just knowing the perfect moment to run, kick or pass — was all over the place.
Even when he made the right call, it came that split second too late, and the opportunity was gone.
In 2018, the kid from Rocky made the call to leave the club he'd been with for a decade.
The multimillion-dollar deal at the Dragons was obviously good money, but more important was the fresh start. The lights of Kogarah Oval are ever-so-slightly less bright than those at Lang Park.
Although the fat contract seemed more like an albatross at times, a cosh pundits and disgruntled fans could use to beat him with when he played worse than the second coming of Allan Langer.
Little did they know in that first season he and his partner, Bridget, were dealing with the grief of a miscarriage that no amount of money could ease.
Eventually, the money stopped being the storyline. Slowly people realised that however good or bad Hunt played had nothing to do with how many zeroes his contract had on it, nor was it his fault that a club offered him that much.
Around that same time, Hunt's former under-20s coach, Anthony Griffin, arrived at the club and handed him the captaincy to start the 2021 season. And the halfback's confidence was back.
It was not a switch that flicked all of a sudden, but more of a dimmer dial being turned up as he matured, became a father, twice, and clearly dealt with some inner demons.
At representative level — be that in Origin or for the Kangaroos — Hunt has shown off his skill time and time again, effortlessly flitting between hooker, halfback, five-eighth and lock, with coaches and teammates trusting him to make the right call in every one of those spots.
For the past two seasons, no-one has kicked more 40/20s than Hunt, and that's a play that is all confidence.
It almost always has to come early in the tackle count, often out of dummy half — one of the hardest plays to master — and getting it wrong can be poisonous in a game where possession is often king.
On Wednesday night, with the game in its 58th minute and more perilously balanced than a ballpoint pen standing on its end, Hunt took command of Queensland.
He directed traffic as they got up to the 40-metre line, slotted in to first receiver in front of his captain and belted a touch-finder 50 metres, catching the Blues' vaunted back three completely off guard.
But that was merely an amuse-bouche. What he pulled off in the 79th minute was one of the greatest and most poetic moments of rugby league a player can have.
With the game on the line and the Blues surging, NSW's biggest stars tried to pull off one last miracle, as Nathan Cleary tried to catch Queensland napping with a cheeky chip over the top for James Tedesco.
Instead, the man who seven years ago couldn't make a catch he'd made thousands of times before, pulled off a mark he maybe never has, turning a leaping charge-down attempt into a clutch grab based purely on instinct.
Not content with saving the game, Hunt set about sealing it, bouncing off Cleary, giving one glance back to see Isaah Yeo as his closest pursuer and taking off 70 metres from home.
Yeo gave admirable chase but Hunt, spurred on by the heaving Lang Park crowd, was never going to let his legs stop.
As he booted the ball into the crowd and let out several primal screams that surely deafened the teammates rushing to embrace him, you could see his story being rewritten in real time.
This is the man who caught the 2022 Origin series and couldn't be caught.
