At their absolute best, the South Sydney Rabbitohs have all the tools in attack to be premiership contenders this year.
And yes, the Penrith Panthers currently look like they are going to run away with all the wins and all the awards in 2026, but six months is a long time in rugby league.
What has become clear is that if anyone is going to challenge Penrith, they are going to have to find a way to challenge their defence constantly, while playing consistent football without errors.
The Rabbitohs certainly have the first part of that equation under lock and key.
They were awesome in patches on Good Friday as they held the Canterbury Bulldogs at bay 32 points to 24 by running out to an early lead, and then having to come back during the second half.
Most of the attention coming out of the game will be on the Bulldogs, Cameron Ciraldo's team s4elections and the performance of the spine who wore blue and white throughout the game.
That's the nature of the beast.
The Bulldogs, right now, are the flavour of the month because a premiership contender looks to be imploding.
That will let South Sydney fly somewhat under the radar, and probably fair enough too. Given their explosive left edge, the start to the season has maybe not been what was expected.
Scratchy wins over the Dolphins and the Tigers, a loss to the Roosters, and Friday's topsy-turvy effort against the boys from Belmore who are under more pressure than anyone.
It was always going to take time to gel, but there were signs that it is getting there during their win over the Bulldogs.
Jye Gray is quickly becoming must-watch TV each and every week. For a guy of his size, he is involved in everything and runs the ball as hard as anyone in the competition.
He doesn't often get driven backwards or dominated either, and it's not hard to see why Wayne Bennett entrusted him with the keys to the club's number one jumper to start the year.
That won't be changing anytime soon.
If Gray is going well at fullback, then you couldn't really say anything different about Latrell Mitchell in the centres.
He has done it before at Origin level of course, and early in his NRL career, but with his experience now, he is a different beast on the edge. Some of his runs, and his shots in defence for that matter, were just about as good as it gets on Friday afternoon.
He has the ability to flip momentum and win games on his own.
But there were negatives for the Rabbitohs, and while it's early in the season, super coach Wayne Bennett and his playing group must get on top of them quickly if they want to catapult up the ladder, otherwise, the facts are the good teams will work them out pretty quickly.
Mitchell himself had a couple of brain explosions throughout Friday. One in particular saw a pushed pass on Tackle 2 that just wasn't needed.
But brain explosions from a guy who is your best attacking weapon you can cop.
What you probably can't accept is the way the bench didn't contribute through the middle of the game, and Jamie Humphreys' kicking game.
Starting with the club halfback, and Humphreys, who was fantastic last year after coming from nowhere to snatch the number seven jumper out from under the nose of Lewis Dodd, hasn't quite hit the ground running in 2026.
That's not to say his form is poor, but the kicking game just hasn't quite been there. It threatened to invite Canterbury back into the contest earlier than it did, in all fairness.
His kicking game was made to look worse by South Sydney losing some of the early effort areas too - their kick chase wasn't really up to scratch.
It got better as the game went on though and the signs are positive.
The bench is by far the biggest problem for South Sydney.
The shift in the game after Cameron Murray and Tevita Tatola went for a sit down during the first half was evident.
The Bulldogs went from being battered out of it to suddenly back in it and in front.
Sean Keppie and Lachlan Hubner, solid as they are, particularly for Hubner in defence, just don't have the punch and go forward of the starting options, and it showed for South Sydney.
The option right now appears to be getting Adam Elliott and Brandon Smith back onto the bench as middle third players and hoping that fixes the problem, while Euan Aitken would also be good to have back.
South Sydney will likely be without Jai Arrow for the year, so we can put a line through discussing that.
What we don't know is whether Wayne Bennett's side were going to be able to turn the game around naturally or not. Cameron Ciraldo just about faciliated it by replacing the injured Stephen Crichton with Sean O'Sullivan.
The Rabbitohs then quickly ran on the points to the out of position edge while Bronson Xerri stewed from the pine.
But it's clear the bench, the kicking game and a couple of one-percenters need some work.
Still, for a team who had mixed predictions pre-season on the back of a horror, injury-riddled 2025, Friday was a great performance for South Sydney.
They are going to be very, very dangerous at the back-end of the year if they can get it right.
It's as simple as that.
