Dally M speculation is as much a tradition for this time of the year as using next month's rent to buy grand final tickets, erasing all evidence of terrible preseason predictions that didn't come true and convincing yourself your team can win the premiership from eighth spot.
The medal itself won't be awarded until grand final week, but round 26 is the last week votes are on the line.
Some contenders have their feet up, others are still trying to gather up those sweet, sweet votes that can get them over the line.
So then the question becomes, who will win? To answer that, here's another question – what kind of players win the Dally M? With very few exceptions, there are six kind of Dally M winners and in the race for the 2022 medal we've got five of them.
The odd man out is The Slam Dunk. Sometimes, the decision as to who should win the Dally M is so incredibly obvious it takes all the mystery out of it, like Tom Trbojevic in 2021 or Johnathan Thurston in 2015.
There is no colossus who stands astride the 2022 season, but what we do have is five strong contenders, each who can mount a compelling and deserving case to win the game's ultimate individual prize.
The Most Valuable Player – Ben Hunt
Where Australians say "best and fairest" our American cousins say "most valuable player" and sometimes the Dally M winner personifies the Yankee phrase in a very literal sense.
He is not just putting the team on his shoulders, he is their beating heart and most of their other body parts beside. Without him the team would have vanished over the horizon long ago, but with him anything is possible.
The classic example of this type of winner is Danny Buderus in 2004, and our 2022 equivalent is Ben Hunt. The Dragons might have dropped out of finals contention weeks ago but it's through no fault of Hunt, who's gone every which way but loose and tried every which way he can to keep their season alive.
Hunt was top of the charts when voting went behind closed doors after Round 12 with 19 votes, two ahead of the pack, and he won't be easy to run down.
The New Sensation – Nicho Hynes
There are not many laws in the rugby league jungle but here's one of them – if you want to make a splash, new is always better.
The sport runs on new blood, fresh sensations, boom rookies and the promise of a better future just around the corner. The narrative of a new star arriving on the scene and taking the sport by storm is a story the game never grows tired of telling.
New players stand out, and if they stand out and play well, they get votes. It's part of the reason Johnathan Thurston was able to scrape home for his first Dally M in his first season with North Queensland back in 2005 and it's why Cronulla's Nicho Hynes is a big chance of emulating that feat in his maiden year with his new team.
The Sharks have risen to the top four this year on the back of many new components, including coach Craig Fitzgibbon and fellow Storm recruit Dale Finucane, but Hynes is the fresh-faced star of the show.
Hynes was three votes back from Hunt in third place once voting went behind closed doors, and Cronulla's winning streak to finish the season has him in with a serious chance.
The Best Player On The Best Team – Isaah Yeo
Sometimes, we don't need to overthink things. The best teams almost always have the best players, and the top player on the top team is rarely a bad choice for a Dally M winner.
It's a brutalist reduction of the process down to a basic equation, but a lot of the time it works. The Roosters were the best team in 2019 and James Tedesco was their best player and he won. In 2017 the Storm crushed the rest of the NRL beneath their feet, so Cameron Smith won. It's not romantic but this isn't always a sport for poets.
Penrith are the best team in the NRL and have been all season. Their best player is either lock Isaah Yeo or halfback Nathan Cleary, depending on the day, and with Cleary missing time this season due to injury and suspension, Yeo is Penrith's best hope.
The star lock is being rested this week, and it could well cost him the medal given how close things might be at the top. Yeo was in second place, two votes behind Hunt, when we last saw the numbers.
The Out-Of-Towner – Cameron Munster
Rugby league can often be accused of being too Sydney-centric, but looking at recent Dally M winners you wouldn't know it. From 2011 to 2021 nine of the 13 Dally M winners (in two seasons there were joint victors) hailed from teams outside Sydney.
Through sheer weight of media coverage, stars in Sydney are more visible in the day-to-day discourse and teams from nearly everywhere else usually have one or two players who dominate the spotlight, which makes it easier for them to collect votes ahead of their teammates. Jack Wighton taking the medal back to Canberra in 2020 is a prime example and New Zealand's Roger Tuivasa-Sheck's triumph in 2018 is another.
This time around, Cameron Munster is the best hope for the road warriors. The Melbourne five-eighth is one of the biggest stars in the game and produced a season of blinding brilliance that has continued even as he's switched to fullback in recent weeks.
The Storm's squad is strong, but not strong enough for him to lose votes to many teammates and even though Munster was seven votes back from Hunt back in round 12, he's in with every chance.
The one we take for granted – James Tedesco
The other side of the coin to The New Sensation. With rugby league's obsession with finding something new and different, we quickly grow accustomed to wonders.
Tedesco has reached the same plane of existence as former Storm legend Cameron Smith – he plays so well every week that we've gotten used to it, so even if what he's doing is objectively excellent, because we see him do it every time he plays it's not special to us anymore.
Tedesco was five votes back on Hunt when voting went private and he's in with a chance to add a second medal to his name after he first won in 2019. He's certainly played well enough.
But it's more likely he'll have to wait, as Smith did. The Melbourne hooker won his first medal in 2006 and but had to wait until 2017 for his second, a wait that saw the arm of history bent all the way back around until his old brilliance became new again in a "can you believe he's still doing this" kind of way.
