Damien Cook will play his final NRL match this weekend. (Getty Images: Bradley Kanaris)
With a bit of luck, they'll tell the old Damien Cook story one more time.
This weekend, the 35-year-old St George Illawarra skipper will play his final NRL match before heading to Super League side Castleford next year.
His farewell will be at Wollongong Showground, the closest ground in the league to the ocean. When the swell's big, you can almost hear the waves crashing on City Beach from the hill.
Maybe it will be when Cook runs out for the 263rd and last time, or perhaps he'll dart out from dummy half to take on the Parramatta defence with a glimpse of the old quickness.
Maybe it'll be the commentators who say it, maybe it'll just be fans in the stands, but someone, somewhere will almost certainly tell somebody else "you know, he used to be a champion beach sprinter."
It's a story nobody seems to tire of telling — Cook himself still hears about it all the time.
"It's the great Dane Gagai's fault. He mentioned it one day when I was doing media — a few people knew about it, but he said it real loud, the journo I was speaking to did a story on it and it got out from there," Cook said.
"It's never stopped; I still get it every day. Commentators say it, I get it in comments, DMs, Instagram stories; if people see a post about a beach sprinter they tag me in it. You have to laugh."
The yarn got its greatest play during Cook's ascent to becoming one of the best hookers in rugby league, which came almost 10 years ago now, and it's worth breaking it out one more time to celebrate the end of an NRL career with an extraordinarily long tail.
It took a while to get going. Cook spent plenty of time as a second-stringer on second-rate teams.
Cook's NRL career took a while to get going. (Getty Images: Brett Hemmings)
He did not make the run on side for an NRL match until he was almost 23 and wasn't a full-time starter at hooker until the year he turned 27.
But after taking the long way, he made up for lost time immediately, and once the beach sprinting tale got used up, we started to tell others.
Cook can't pick his favourite himself. He is overwhelmed by the memories he's made because there are so many.
