Jarrod Wallace feels the Gold Coast Titans aren't far off from something special.
The 180-game prop is predicting as soon as the side finds their groove, they'll be a force to be reckoned with.
It's just important they are able to start well - especially this week against the Cowboys - in order to be that winning team the side has been training hard to become.
"We're just getting our starts wrong. I think we're coming out with plenty of energy and plenty of spring in our step. It's just when we get that call that doesn't go our way or the bounce of the ball, we kind of go into our shells for a bit. It's kind of the period around the 25-minute to the to the half-time bell that's been killing us," Wallace said on 4BC's Wide World of Sports.
"We just need to get our starts a bit better and I feel like we're working really hard at training at the moment to make sure that we're we're getting that.
"Tino (Fa'asuamaleaui), Moe (Fotuaika) and Isaac Liu are really working hard to make sure that we're on the front foot and getting that momentum so that we can start well.
"The NRL is just too hard to be playing catch up the whole game. It's not fun and we need to get a good start.
"We need to be making sure that we're doing what we've been doing in the second half in the first half and connecting them together because we need to put it on for the full 80."
In his sixth season at the Titans, the 30-year-old has relished being among the young playing roster, helping him remain energised and up-and-about.
"There's so young and energetic, I love being around," Wallace said.
"I've been in some pretty great teams and pretty successful teams in my career that I've had and I've been super lucky, but this team has so much talent and the brotherhood that's been built the last two years... it's exactly what we need to be successful.
"What Justin and the Jimmy's (Dymock and Lenihan) and Brad Davis are doing here and bringing us together. Even our young captain in Tino, he's always organising things to make sure that we're doing things as a team. We're bonding and we're always talking and we're always building better connections so that we can take that out onto the football field.
"It's starting to show and once it really clicks, like it did last year, I think it will be hard to stop. We've just got to find that little groove and once we get in there, that's where the times will be fun."
Given their close-knit relationship across the group and supporting each other, the former Origin forward has his full support behind the call for Beau Fermor to be in the mix as a Maroon bolter for the upcoming series.
"He's an absolute workhorse and a legend of a guy off the field. He'd be the perfect person to have in that Queensland culture that Billy Slater is building," Wallace said.
"He plays 80 minutes every week. He gets through his work and you never hear a peep out of him. He's lightning fast, so he could play the backs just as easy as he's been playing in the middle on the edge.
"He definitely wouldn't look out of place in that Origin arena and I think he'd really thrive on it."
