For the first 25 minutes of Friday's match against South Sydney, the Roosters looked a lot like they have through the first two matches of the competition.
Passes were not sticking. The middle looked fragile. The Rabbitohs were scoring tries and slapping their chests and looking good doing it.
Then they came, like drifters from the high plains with quick draws and bad intentions. Around the 25th minute, Jared Waerea-Hargreaves and Brandon Smith were subbed on together and things changed, in ways large and small.
The 20-18 Tricolour victory was far from perfect. Round 3 matches rarely are and if you're a serious team you almost don't want them to be. This is a long season and it's important to peak at the right time.
But for a team vaunted as premiership favourites, it had been a lean opening fortnight for the Roosters, with a loss and a scratchy win to show for it.
Injuries have stretched them thin and meant we were yet to see anything close to the best of Waerea-Hargreaves and Smith. In what proved to be a masterstroke in managing resources from Trent Robinson, he benched the two stars in the hour before kick-off.
The Kiwi duo have not had beginnings to remember in 2023. Smith's first two games for his new club after his high-profile move from Melbourne have both ended early.
When Felise Kaufusi wiped 'The Cheese' out in the Dolphins' upset win two weeks ago it was a microcosm of why the Roosters were beaten to the punch all day. They were out-muscled and out-fought.
Even at 34, Waerea-Hargreaves is the man who stops that from happening.
For all of Lindsay Collins's brute force and Victor Radley's disregard for his own safety and the quality of absent duo Matt Lodge and Angus Crichton, it is Waerea-Hargreaves who ensures the Roosters pack hit with the kind of intent usually reserved for the last spike on a railroad. He walks the line and dares you to cross it.
"He said ‘I’m going through these guys’ and everyone jumped on the back of that. Without Jared today we wouldn’t have won the game," said Smith.
"I’ve had the privilege of rooming with Jazza every (New Zealand) tour we’ve been on, so I know what he’s about and I know what he brings.
"But this game here was something new, his mentality toward controlled aggression, the way he spoke to the team out on the field when the scuffles were going on and how he stayed composed – I was quite proud of him, I know that’s something he’s been working on.
"We don’t want Jared playing one week on and three weeks off; we want him all the way through the season, and I thought he took a big step towards that controlled aggression without being soft.
"In that scuffle he grabbed a few of the boys and said ‘it’s all good, it’s all good, keep calm’ and he was telling us to control our emotions and when he’s saying that... When someone like that is saying that...
"He spoke about discipline at the beginning of the game and I said ‘are these words coming out of your mouth?’. Outstanding!
"He didn’t look too old out there, he’s looking a lot younger than the other front-rowers but he’s got an ugly head, geez it’s battered and bruised."
True enforcers, like Waerea-Hargreaves, have an air about them, like fighters do. They don't have to talk about it, because they're already tough like some guys think they're tough.
While Waerea-Hargreaves ran for 150 metres from 15 carries, the most of any forward on the field, his true value hasn't been measurable on a stat sheet for some years now. Just know that when he came on the field, something changed and everyone felt it.
Smith doesn't quite have that air about him, not yet. He's comfortable in a street fight-type match for sure, but the best parts of his game is still sudden and dynamic, like the try he scored in the 33rd minute that began the fightback.
"That 60-metre runaway? Where I broke through six tackles? No, it was good, when I came on everyone was a bit more tired, we did a bit of video on the markers throughout the week, I’m just lucky everything worked out to plan," Smith said.
"If Sam Walker didn’t push through the line Lachlan Ilias wouldn’t have fell for the dummy, so I have to thank him for that.
"Or was it Luke Keary? I can’t remember, I was too busy feeling the wind in the back of my hair, too busy flying at Usain Bolt speed."
Like so many players, Smith's greatest weakness is the underside of his greatest strength. He runs on high-octane fuel and explodes from dummy half like few others can, but he's more of a sprinter than a marathon runner.
If you're asking him to play 80 minutes it's a tall order. But playing 55 minutes, and coming on when there's a little less bite in the game? That's right in his strike zone and he's never afraid of swinging.
"I made a career of sitting on the bench and coming on when everyone was tired, so it wasn’t new to me," Smith said.
"I came on and you saw when I came on there was a lot of tired bodies and I got rewards for all the work Jake Turpin did; if you look at the first half all they did was tackle the whole time.
"It’s not something I want to get used to, I wanted to be a starting number nine but the coach gives you a role, you have to play it."
Once Smith and Waerea-Hargreaves came on, the Roosters outscored their old rivals 20-8. The ball moved across the field more smoothly and they found a new desperation in defence, both with their scramble and their kick pressure.
It flipped the yardage battle, forcing the Rabbitohs onto the back foot and starved their vaunted playmakers of any good field position.
South Sydney can usually find space anyway, and more than once they did, but they were cruelled by two magnificent defensive plays – first from James Tedesco when he made a superb open-field tackle on a runaway Campbell Graham.
It happened again through Joseph Manu when he found a second effort to dislodge the ball from Isaiah Tass when the centre looked tryline bound.
This was not a championship quality game – a string of errors from both teams made sure of that – but these are certainly two teams with championship aspirations, with all the fire and fury that entails.
In winning, the Roosters are finding their way towards the kind of form that brings premierships back to Bondi.
That's still a long way off. Competitions aren't won on steamy nights in March and there will be further short-term pain with Manu suffering a possible broken cheekbone in the fiery encounter.
But this was a win they had to fight hard for, against a side worth fighting, who they'll see again when the stakes are much, much higher.
In unlocking Smith and getting the best of Waerea-Hargreaves when it counted, the pre-season premiership favourites are just that little bit closer to what they know and most fear they can become.
