Josh Reynolds has been coming to Belmore for about as long as he can remember but he'll never forget what it was like when he walked through the doors of the old ground at the start of the summer.
"I was a bit nervous when I came back. I wasn't sure how I'd feel," Reynolds said.
"But when I walked through those doors for the first time, it all hit me. I hadn't felt like that in a long time.
"Seeing the names on the boards, seeing all the people, it made me feel like I was home."
There are bigger recruits this season at Canterbury than Reynolds but none of the Bulldogs new guard, not Reed Mahoney and Viliame Kikau, not Matt Burton and Josh Addo-Carr, sum up where the club wants to go quite like the veteran five-eighth.
The Bulldogs are at a low point. One of the lowest in the club's history, in fact. They've missed the finals six seasons in a row now — the last time they did that was in the early 1960s.
Sometimes, you have to go back to actually move forward and that's not to reminisce or to chase ghosts. It's just to remind yourself where you came from, where you've been and how you got there.
Some people might say you can't go back, but you can. You just have to look in the right place.
Canterbury are bringing it all back home and — as part of Phil Gould and new coach Cameron Ciraldo's mission to revive one of the NRL's sleeping giants — they looked to Reynolds.
When we talk about the past with Canterbury we invariably go back to the 1980s and the Mortimer and Hughes brothers and Warren Ryan and the Dogs of War and all the rest, but Reynolds represents a more recent type of history, one most of his younger teammates grew up watching.
He is not of 2004, the last of the club's premiership years, but in terms of players who still pull the boots on, he's about as close as you can get.
The 33-year old is the only Canterbury player who has played in a semi-final for the club and the only man left from the 2012 and 2014 grand final sides, which makes him the last playing link to the final stages of the club's glorious past before they crashed into the purgatory they are now fighting desperately to escape.
Reynolds doesn't need to play every minute of every week to have an impact on this squad.
There are few players anywhere in rugby league who want what they want more than Reynolds does and that desire, that intensity, that furious will to fight and fight and fight some more, is what he can impart to the Bulldogs again.
It was only a trial, but the vision of him exhorting his teammates before their win over Canberra last week was a peek into what he still has to offer.
"I always think about 2012 and 2014, when we were flying, and I want these boys to feel what we felt, to bring that joy back to the area again," Reynolds said.
"In one of our first meetings, Cirro put up a photo of the area, a map of the people we represent, and I wasn't sure where he was going with it.
"But he talked about years and years ago, before Belmore was even here, before there was any housing, to show us what this area is built on, what kind of hard-working area it was.
"Everywhere you go, clubs dip their toe into 'Who represented this jersey' and 'Make sure you know the ex-players' and everything like that and, don't get me wrong, I love all that stuff wherever I played.
"But this goes next level, this is representing my community, my place.
"I grew up 100 metres up the street. You want to do it for the area, the people you see at the bread shop in the morning that you see on the hill later. You want to do it for them."
That intensity and passion for the jersey and the district gave Reynolds a rare affinity with the Bulldogs fan base during his first stint with the club, from 2011 to 2017.
They might have had better players or bigger ones, but Reynolds is the guy who got a standing ovation just for coming off the bench when the club played their first match at Belmore in 17 years, back in 2015.
Reynolds is the guy who was chaired off the field by the fans during his last game for the club at their spiritual home two seasons later.
For the fans, he was one of them, just like Jacob Kiraz is now. The rollicking Lebanese winger became an instant fan favourite when he made his debut last year and there's no prizes for guessing who was the lifelong Canterbury fan's number one boy was when he was growing up.
"My guy was Grub, for sure. Josh Reynolds was my favourite player," Kiraz said.
"When all the rumours came out that he might come back, I messaged him. We didn't know each other well but I said, 'Please tell me it's true'.
"I looked up to him, I loved the passion and the heart he played with. I try to play with my heart, just like he does."
Like Reynolds, the Bulldogs are not just a club Kiraz plays for — they're a part of who he was and who he still is. Even as he took the long walk from the Belmore hill to the centre of the pitch, going through two other clubs before his belated debut last year, his dreams were always blue and white.
And now he's here, now Reynolds is back, now Ciraldo is in charge and this year's big signings are gelling with last year's big signings, so there can be no more waiting.
"The club sort of got used to losing and it's been hard on guys like Ray (Faitala-Mariner) who have been here a long time," Kiraz said.
"It becomes a habit, I guess. I was only here last year, but losing was still the worst thing. I hated it and the boys hated it.
"We want to get that culture out and I feel like the group this year is so close and, with the new coaching staff, we all just can't wait.
"We know success is coming, we just have to believe in it. To be part of that, to help build that culture. It'll be a mad story when I'm older."
Emotion and passion can't take you all the way. The Bulldogs still need to find a consistent option at fullback, Kyle Flanagan has to go up a notch at halfback and they'll want some centres to emerge if they're to justify their status as the trendy, pre-season pick to make the finals.
There has been so much talk about Ciraldo during his time as an assistant with the Panthers that he will not be afforded the leeway that usually comes with a new coach.
However, there is a sense the Bulldogs have found something over this summer, something that they lost along the way in their meandering journey through the bottom half of the NRL ladder.
It just feels a little different around Belmore. The sun is a little bit brighter. The grass is a little bit greener. The train that rumbles past the northern side of the ground sounds a little bit louder because the old heroes are back and that helps the new ones to stand a little taller.
The final step is to make it more than pre-season talk. For it to come true and for the Bulldogs to really bring it all back home, there's some winning to be done. They have all the feelings, but it has to turn into something real.
"They boys don't shy away from saying it's been a tough time. We've had a lot of ex-players come in and speak about how good it is when this club gets on a roll, that it's the best place to be at and how they block off the streets when you make a grand final," Reynolds said.
"But they also re-iterate [that] there's a lot of hard work to get there, even if you have great buys and all that.
"We need to find the way we want to play, and it's a long road, but I've never seen a team work harder. There's been no complaining, no nothing. As long as you stick with it and you're honest with each other, all those other things will come."
