Two years on from an embarrassing winless season, NSW Waratahs have openly set their sights on a top-four Super Rugby Pacific finish.
With Darren Coleman entering his second season as coach, a squad loaded with Wallabies talent, as well as a teenager tipped to be the next big thing in Australian rugby, and a new stadium to boot, expectations abound for a franchise that is happy to embrace the hype.
But such hype is perhaps not misdirected either. You only have to go back to 2014, Michael Cheika's second year in charge when, after an improved showing in the coach's first season, the Waratahs ended their 18-year wait for a Super Rugby title.
And there are some clear parallels to that season, too. In 2013, the Waratahs finished with eight wins; that same number NSW recorded last year; Coleman has bolstered his squad for this season, just as Cheika did in 2014 with the recruitment of Jacques Potgieter; and finally, both Cheika and Coleman seem to have an innate ability to connect with players on a deeper level.
Not that the current Waratahs coach sees it all that way, even if he is happy to embrace the comparison.
"I hadn't really thought about how it related to Cheik's reign here, but geez if it is half as successful as his I'll take it," Coleman told ESPN on the eve of Super Rugby Pacific 2023. "Yeah, there's expectation but I probably brought a bit of that on myself by talking about lofty goals, but you can't hide from it.
"You can sort of keep trying to buy yourself years of employment by saying 'oh, we're building slowly or we're doing this,' but Sydney, and NSW particularly, they want winners. So you don't have to be an Einstein to work out if we don't win games of football and keep this team credible and people come and support, then what are we doing?"
Coleman has, from a career that has taken him all around the rugby world and beyond, forged a reputation as a coach that players want to play for. It may seem a tad simplistic, even clichéd, but the well-travelled New South Welshman appears to have an innate ability to connect with his players on a deeper level.
That's certainly how another of this year's recruits, Harrison Goddard, describes a man whom he has now followed to four different clubs.
"I've known DC since I was probably 15 or 16 I think, he invited me to my first NRC with the [NSW] Country Eagles when I was younger," Goddard told ESPN. "We've had a good relationship since Gordon, we won the 2020 [Shute Shield] premiership and had a year in LA together; he's just a very emotional coach who connects well with his players and I've had a pretty good connection with him since school.
"He knows my strengths and weaknesses and he helps me with that, and he's done well last year and I'm hoping to feed off that and have a good season with the Tahs this year... you want to play for him, he connects with you on an emotional level and the boys get emotional too.
"We do some stuff here that allows us to talk to each other and be comfortable with talking about whatever, and that allows us to go on the field and back your mate and back your team."
Coleman on Wednesday named an imposing team for the Waratahs' season opener against the Brumbies, which NSW Rugby officials hope will draw a crowd in excess of 25,000 at the rebuilt Allianz Stadium.
In another parallel with Cheika, Coleman seemingly took a leaf out of his Waratahs predecessor's handbook - the former Wallabies coach was known for his unconventional methods -- when he had the entire squad and coaching staff spend the night out on the Allianz turf, that was at least until the rain arrived at 2am.
Hopefully the wet weather will stay away on Friday for a clash that features no less than 25 Wallabies across both squads, and a teenager who has gone from HSC exams to a Super Rugby debut in under six months.
Max Jorgensen, who was kept from the clutches of rugby league after starring for St Joseph's College in Sydney's GPS schoolboy competition, will become the Waratahs' second youngest debutant behind only Kurtley Beale when he runs out onto Allianz Stadium on Friday night.
It is a debut that has come a little earlier than expected, one brought forward because of an injury to Dylan Pietsch, but after seeing Jorgensen in action during the trials Coleman is adamant it is not before time.
"Definitely ahead of where I thought he would be when I signed him," Coleman said of Jorgensen. "But after watching him train for the first month or two, you didn't have to be a great football judge to see that this kid is a gun.
"So to see what he did in the Reds [trial] game, that try he scored, he's been doing that for three months at training, so that didn't surprise me. But to be honest, I'd seen him play school football but you never how quickly that is going to correlate to playing against men.
"But he's tough, on top of that he's brave, and he's really composed, he flat lines, he never really gets excited or down in the dumps, he's got a good level head on him."
The Waratahs know getting past the Brumbies in Round 1 won't be easy, and can expect plenty more ribbing from fans of the other Australian franchises if they fail to start on the right note.
Reds coach Brad Thorn and skipper Tate McDermott are certainly happy to see the attention elsewhere, but this is indeed far cry from the Waratahs team that went 13 games without a win in 2021.
Skipper Jake Gordon rode the lows of that season, and the mini-revival last year, and he says the team has no choice but to embrace the expectation and take another step up from last year.
"The outside noise is always going to be there, it was there when we weren't too good in 2021 and we bounced back pretty quickly there," Gordon told ESPN. "So I think we've just got to control the group, we've got a great squad, we've got some awesome leaders in there, competition across the park, so I think we have to focus on playing well like we did last year and the rest will take care of itself.
"I think if you look at our squad now, you really only need to look at the back-row where you've got Michael Hooper and Charlie Gamble at No. 7; Langi Gleeson, Ned [Hanigan], Lachlan Swinton, the list goes on.
"So I think if you look at our squad now across all the positions we've got some great depth."
Stability, too, is critical. After the sudden exit of Daryl Gibson, the onset of COVID, Rob Penney's hiring and firing, and their nomadic existence around Sydney and beyond, the Waratahs are finally seemingly settled on, and off, the park.
It's one of the reasons why Charlie Gamble has hitched his wagon to the Waratahs and Australian rugby, the New-Zealand born flanker who will start at No. 8 on Friday sharing similar insights to Gordon on what Coleman was building in Sydney.
"We just understand him and he understands that he needs a good relationship with every single person individually, and he really has done that," he told ESPN. "And I think he's showed that he really does care about this place, he's got a background here, he's worked at the Waratahs before, and then he has done his own journey and then come back in a full circle.
"So we obviously appreciate that he has done the journey as well, and he has brought in people who have fought adversity as well, and we've just really bonded and bought into what he is building here. We love him."
Can the man himself emulate the deeds of Cheika, then?
Such has been the chaos in the world, and in Super Rugby, that it feels like a lifetime ago that 63,000 people crammed into the Olympic Stadium at Homebush to see the Waratahs beat the Crusaders in the 2014 decider.
"We're really excited. I never kind of said we're going to win the comp, but that's our goal and if you're not going to the start line thinking that, what are you doing," Coleman told ESPN.
"So we want to start well, we want a really good home record, and when people come down to watch us at the football stadium they feel entertained and know that the boys gave their all."