When the weather starts to get colder, the scent of State of Origin fills the air and every year there's at least one selection battle where even the smallest thing will send the horses running.
This year it's the race to partner Nathan Cleary in the New South Wales halves, which has a host of contenders but only two true runners – Penrith's Jarome Luai and Cronulla's Nicho Hynes.
There's still six weeks to go before Brad Fittler picks his squad for the first match at Adelaide Oval, but we're now well and truly on a campaign trail and it's time to start shaking hands, slapping backs and kissing babies, because every failure and triumph becomes magnified on the road to South Australia.
Luai's latest effort in Penrith's last-minute 20-18 loss to the Rabbitohs on Thursday night, was industrious without being dominant. The 26-year old was never out of the game but the action was down the other edge, where Stephen Crichton scored a hat-trick.
The Panthers' left side, which has had a few teething problems in adjusting to life without Viliame Kikau, is beginning to look a little more cohesive without tearing the Rabbitohs apart. It was closer to a busy performance than a dazzling one and it remains to be seen if games like that will be enough for Luai to hold his jersey.
He is the incumbent, but reigning Dally M medallist Hynes has the juice – so much so that other deserving contenders in good form with Origin experience, like Parramatta's Mitchell Moses and South Sydney's Cody Walker (who showed truly delicious playmaking craft to create the winning try for Isaiah Tass) – have shrunk into the background.
The Cronulla man has become one of the NRL's brightest stars in the last 12 months and if the rugby league public hit the voting booth today he'd be swept in for his Origin debut by a landslide, and it's easy to understand why.
Hynes is one of the newest and shiniest things in a sport obsessed with new and shiny things. His week-to-week excellence with Cronulla is still fresh enough that plenty of fans outside the Shire are enjoying it.
On a technical level, he'd be a good fit for the Blues. Fittler's side was exposed at times last year for their lack of variation in their kicking game – aside from the occasional Matt Burton thunderblast, there was little support for Cleary in that department, and Queensland's ability to apply pressure to the Panthers halfback was a major part in securing their victory last year.
Hynes, who posses a slightly more sophisticated kicking game than Luai, would go a long way to solving that problem and he plays with a calmness and clarity of purpose that belies his relative inexperience as an NRL half.
Such has been his excellence over the past 12 months it's easy to forget he has just one season as a starting halfback in the big leagues under his belt.
The attacking numbers are all in Hynes's favour and the Central Coast product has been on Fittler's radar well before the Dally M Medal was placed around his neck last year.
He was 18th man for Game III of the 2021 series and was part of the extended squad again last year. He might not have played Origin but he's come just about as close as someone can without actually doing it.
Luai's place in the court of public opinion is what happens when that shine Hynes currently enjoys starts wearing off. Like many of his Penrith teammates, he's been at the top of the mountain long enough that many are sick of looking up at him.
Like anybody who plays on the edge, Luai can occasionally tip right over it, but that same edge is one of his and Penrith's superpowers and it's one he was able to translate into the Blues' thumping series victory in 2021.
His approach to the game was best summed up by Luai himself in the aftermath of Samoa's pulsating win over England in last year's World Cup semifinal – on the field, there are only brothers and enemies. It always helps to have guys like that in State of Origin, which, as Jack Gibson once said, is proof the meek don't inherit anything.
Beyond that, Luai has existing combinations for the Blues both with Cleary, who said earlier this week his long-time teammate helps him play better, and walk-up starts Latrell Mitchell and James Tedesco, who have both combined well with Luai in the past.
The campaign will resume on Saturday when Cronulla play the Bulldogs where Hynes is odds on to star again. Public sentiment will only grow in his favour but that means little – this is a decision that will be decided by an electoral college of one and Fittler, for better and for worse, marches to the beat of his own drum on these decisions.
There's still plenty of time on the clock, but as it stands this shapes as a classic Origin dilemma. What counts for more, form or experience? Incumbency or a fresh start? Is it worth blowing up old combinations to build new ones?
Both Luai and Hynes could well be in the team when the Blues head to South Australia – Jack Wighton's representative retirement has left the Blues short of a strong utility option, a role Hynes could easily fill – but even then, deciding between the two should be a call without a downside, a bet the Blues can't lose.
Both men are fine players, great competitors and have done more than enough to earn the spots. But that's not how it works. For someone to rise, others must fall.
The battle for Adelaide could be as fierce as anything that happens on the pitch because there can be only one.
