The North Queensland Cowboys enter the final five weeks of the season on the back of the biggest hiding ever recorded in the NRL era.
They copped a staggering 82 points last weekend, at home, and became the first top tier rugby league team in this country to let in more points than the clock in about 90 years.
The records don't need repeating, although you can bet they have been singed into the back of the heads for many of the players last weekend.
Reuben Cotter maybe summed it up best in the post-game press conference, saying it was the most embarrassing day of his rugby league career.
Todd Payten also labelled it the darkest day in the history of the Cowboys.
Neither of those statements are hyperbole either. They are 100 per cent accurate, with the Cowboys now needing a monster bounce back over their final four games, with a bye scheduled in a fortnight's time, to ensure they play finals football this season.
There have been some suggestions made by fans that they don't deserve to play finals because they copped one big score.
That, frankly, is nonsense.
Every team is entitled to an off day. It just turns out that the Cowboys off day was the worst most of us living will have ever seen.
An immediate bounce back is critical for the Townsville-based side, but they have been blessed with what can only be described as the easiest run to the finish line anywhere in the competition, with the Gold Coast Titans and Parramatta Eels on the road before their bye, with games at home against the Wests Tigers and Canberra Raiders following that.
Realistically, if they are a finals team, they should be winning all four of those games and comfortably.
There is absolutely zero excuse for them to not be up for Thursday's game. A seven-day turnaround to lick the proverbial wounds of the biggest scoreline in history, to take on the closer to the bottom of the table Titans who come off a five-day turnaround.
But what we will see again over the next month and change heading into the finals is the form of Jason Taumalolo, and exactly how important their decade-long contracted star will be to the club.
You could actually make the argument the Cowboys have played their best football this year when Taumalolo has been, for lack of a better word, “on”.
It's frankly a scarcely believable statement given some of the games he has dished up in recent years, where his career has been heavily hindered by injury.
In ten games last year, he started to bounce back, but has slot into a reduced role beautifully this year, becoming a ball-running prop rather than attempting to be a ball-playing lock, and playing less than 50 minutes in all bar three games.
That has brought with it exceptional results.
Taumalolo may not be in career-best form, but he isn't all that far away.
As it stands, in 19 games, he has made 154 metres per contest to go with 16 offloads and 43 tackle breaks.
His running game has always been his strongest suit, and in a season where he has only failed to make a tackle break once, that has never been truer.
His consistency, for the most part, has been tremendous.
But his personal performances are so much more than that.
The club leader, who recently brought up 300 games as a Cowboy, leads the pack, raises the standards of those around him, and more importantly, plays a pivotal role in the club's attack.
When he is on, bending the defensive line, poking his nose through, and making big post-contact metres, which he does on the regular, it creates time and space.
That is critical, because the Cowboys need exactly that for their star men to go to work.
Tom Dearden is out at the moment, but will be back for the finals, while Scott Drinkwater's running game and ability to create points is almost unparalleled in the competition.
As inconsistent as he has at times, particularly in defence, Drinkwater might be the game's most dangerous attacking fullback.
You simply can't overlook how much of that comes down to the way Taumalolo plays the game.
North Queenland have some good young forwards on the way through, and other experienced campaigners, but none of them mean to this team what Taumalolo does.
They certainly won't be unbeatable come the finals, but the next month, and the one after that, needs as many strong performances from Taumalolo as possible.
If the Cowboys are going to make the finals, and then go any further, the club are counting on it.
