Media day for the North Queensland Cowboys this week was busier than usual. A few out-of-town journalists flew in for the occasion, a couple of extra cameras were rolling and players were busy doing phone hook-ups with reporters unable to make the trip.
In sleepy Townsville, that constitutes a "circus", as back-rower Gavin Cooper described it. It's taken for them to be one game away from the grand final to get noticed this season and now they've arrived, people are starting to pay attention.
The added media queries has been a slight disturbance to what has become one of North Queensland's best weapons in recent finals series - the bliss of isolation.
Once again they have stayed mostly clear of the spotlight to plan another hit-and-run mission to Sydney, where they meet the Roosters on Saturday for a spot in the grand final.
Already they have accounted for two of Sydney's darling teams in the Sharks and Parramatta. A third is hardly beyond them as Paul Green and his team go about their business, burdened only with their internal expectations, not those outside of their inner-sanctum.
"Very much so. It's handy for us [being out of the spotlight]," Cooper said. "There's not generally a whole lot of media around or too much to say about us. We can just do our own thing and if we get a couple of good wins away from home, that's when people start talking."
"At this time of the year, people up here expect us to be playing now. From the inside, we always expected to be here, even with what some people would regard as excuses.
"People from the outside may not have expected it but we did, which is why there's now a bit of a circus about what we've been able to do."
Their story has been a good one. Deprived of Matt Scott (entire season) and Johnathan Thurston (since Origin II), the Cowboys fell into the finals through some good fortune, then barged their way through the opening fortnight as outsiders.
Chronically underrated through a host of positions, the Cowboys see no reason why they can't make it a hat-trick of finals wins when they meet the Roosters, fresh off a week's break and a reasonably convincing week-one win over Brisbane.
All the while, they have been able to retreat to the relative bubble of the tropics as the Roosters undergo the sort of intense scrutiny and expectation that goes with being the only team alive from the Harbour City.
"I've never been part of a team in Sydney. In Melbourne, it was always away from the noise as well. It was similar in that way. It does help," centre Justin O'Neill said.
"You can come back, get your training right and get very focused here before we head off to Sydney to play."
The cult of the Cowboys remains strong in the north. They have been greeted at Townsville Airport like they had just won the grand final for the past two weeks. No other team has become accustomed to the same sort of adoration.
"From week one to week two, there was an extra 200. If we won this week, half of Townsville will be there," said forward Coen Hess, who has overcome a knee injury to be fit for the clash.
"It's really special ... as a playing group we really appreciate it. It goes to show how important the football team is up here and what it means to people up here. It was only a few years ago that would have been me in their shoes."
