He's the "all-tendon, junkyard dog" that's whipped Australian rugby into a frenzy, but Queensland Reds winger Tim Ryan's superb start to Super Rugby is no flash-in-the-pan, it is instead a carefully managed road that could well be the blueprint for talented youngsters in the future.
Ryan made his professional run-on debut against the Blues a fortnight ago, scoring a hat trick in the Reds' devastating golden point loss -- their second such defeat this year -- before he backed it up with a double in Christchurch a week later and then a superb finish for a five-pointer in last Friday's win over the Rebels.
Six tries in his first three starts have made him Australia's breakout star of Super Rugby Pacific 2024, a tag he'd unlikely to be wearing had he not charted a course through club rugby first.
"He came through the colts in 2022, and we just allowed him to play colts, because he was pretty slight," Brendan Gabbett, Ryan's coach at Brothers, who won Brisbane's Hospital Cup Grand Final last year, told ESPN.
"He was good enough [to play grade], but we just wanted him to be a colt; I just believe colts is your best year of footy, you're just having fun, you're still living that schoolboy stuff; he was very very good and you could see he was a good footballer, but he just really enjoyed the year with his mates, because once you go into grade you never get those mates again. And then last year we picked him early - he was always going to play A-grade for us, he was always going to be in our side - but what was interesting is that early on, and this was the best thing that we did, we just left him to play wing for A-grade.
"He made some mistakes, but he made them in front of 1,000 people, not 10,000 or 20,000, so he really worked on his game and he really worked out who he was as a footballer in the club scene. And then he went away with the [Australia] 20s, and when he came back his last six games for Brothers were unbelievable, it was almost like this boy had turned into a man because he was left alone to work on his game and not put pressure on him to play for the Reds or play professional football early.
"He just dominated the [Hospital Cup] Grand Final, if you want to see a game of football just watch the last 20 minutes of the Grand Final last year, he could have got best player."
First-year Reds coach Less Kiss waited until Round 10 to throw Ryan his first run-on Super Rugby start, the 20-year-old beginning the season behind established outside backs Jordan Petaia, Jock Campbell, Mac Grealy and Suliasi Vunivalu.
Ryan's three-try performance against the Blues then went viral and the "junkyard dog" -- a throwaway line from Reds teammate Matt Faessler on the Socks Up podcast -- has since taken a bite out of the Crusaders and Rebels despite his seemingly wiry frame.
Reds and Wallabies veteran James O'Connor then jokingly declared Ryan was "all tendon", yet the winger seemingly boxes up a couple of weight divisions.
"He's a good young man and he's got a real level head on him," O'Connor told Stan Sport. "He really wants to work on his fundamentals and I think genuine finishers, there's not too many of them in the game, and he's one of them. He's got it and I'm looking forward to seeing where he can go to."
Unlike Ryan, O'Connor was thrust into the Super Rugby spotlight as a teenager, and more than a decade on, fully admits he made plenty of mistakes on and off the field.
Meanwhile, down at the Waratahs, teenage sensation Max Jorgensen has followed the O'Connor path, the NSW fullback making his Super Rugby debut just six months out of school. Jorgensen, too, has enjoyed some sublime moments and even made Australia's Rugby World Cup squad, but he has already paid a high price for his efforts with a knee injury, broken leg and, most recently, a hamstring tear all occurring in the space of 12 months.
While Jorgensen could have obviously suffered those injuries by playing colts or grade rugby -- the hamstring tear did in fact happen while he was playing for Randwick a fortnight ago -- he may have been better served learning his trade down a level.
That's certainly Gabbett's opinion, though the advances of Sydney Roosters and other NRL clubs also created a difficult situation for the Waratahs to manage with Jorgensen.
"For me, and this is just a personal opinion, they need to find their game where it's safe," Gabbett told ESPN. "I don't think in the professional environment, especially at an age when they don't know what they are good at, that if they do something wrong, how do they get out of that, how do they respond to that?
"How many times have we seen these young footballers get rushed in at 18/19, and fail, and then get kicked out the other end when they're 21? There's no rush; you're talking Horan, Little, these were the last guys that came in and made a massive difference to a team.
"So I just think let them find themselves, let them dominate A-grade, if you're not dominating an A-grade men's competition, not colts, not schoolboys, if you're not dominating a men's game of football, which Tim did, then how can you dominate or be ready for Super Rugby?
"So let Jorgensen, let all these kids, go and dominate games of football against men at suburban grounds, and then bring them in. And I reckon Tim Ryan is the perfect example of letting someone be comfortable playing against men, dominating, and then succeeding at Super level."
Ryan's toughness - the contact he survived to score a second try against the Crusaders a prime example - was helped by some junior rugby league where he played five-eighth and defended in the front line, while Gabbett sees a little of one of the Wallabies' all-time best finishers in the 20-year-old's game.
"I'm going back to the greats here, maybe Ben Tune when he was young," Gabbett said when asked if Ryan reminded him of anyone in particular.
"Tuney was a bit bigger but he had that electric speed, and I think what they do too is when they step they don't lose any speed. So if you look at Tim Ryan, and Ben Tune was the same, that when they step, their next step they were just as fast."
With a "good family, good grounding" behind him, Ryan looks set for a long and successful professional career. And if his efforts in three games are anything to go by, so too a stint with the Australia Under 20s in 2023, a Wallabies call-up might arrive sooner rather than later.
And his journey may yet spur recruitment and pathways managers, and ultimately Super Rugby coaches, into a rethink when it comes to similar players and how they are developed in the future.
The Reds have also shrewdly moved Ryan back to the bench for this week's game against the Drua in Fiji, allowing him to take a breather, of sorts, after a whirlwind three weeks.
"He's got all the tools, but the best tool he's got is he wants to work hard for it," Gabbett summised on Ryan.
"He's been given nothing cheaply; he didn't get signed from school, he didn't get signed from colts; he plied his trade [in club football] and he worked hard, and he just got better and better and better, but he did it in a quiet workmanlike fashion and he just got the job done.
"And his performances stood out that much that much that they couldn't say no... I said from the start that if they leave this kid alone he could actually be a Wallaby for years that makes a difference. Just give him time to develop. He'll play for the Wallabies this year, he has to."