With his surf-blond hair, Daly Cherry-Evans looks like he could have been raised in the shadow of Burleigh's famous headland instead of sugarcane country in Mackay, via sleepy bayside Brisbane.
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As of next season, he must try and convince the Gold Coast that he virtually was; a transplanted saviour ready to turn around the fortunes of the region's perennially unsturdy rugby league franchise.
The addition of Cherry-Evans to the 2015 Titans represents the biggest coup in the short history of the club, surpassing the original signing of Scott Prince, the halfback that would for so long be the face of the business and the keeper of its on-field fortunes.
But with the immense price tag – an estimated $4 million for Cherry-Evans over as many seasons – comes expectation, pressure and intense scrutiny. Such is life for rugby league's marquee men, whose fortunes have differed greatly over the years as they follow the money to fresh pastures.
It has been celebrated as an antidote to the glut of bad news engulfing the Titans, but with any major playing purchase comes major risk. Broncos great Steve Renouf says any club that puts the majority of its eggs in one basket rolls the dice, although he believes the pay-off in this case to be worth the gamble.
"I think it is [a gamble]. I really do think it can be. You just don't know ... who knows what will happen and how they fit in? You can't know that," Renouf said.
"But I think it's a good positive for a club that has endured a lot of negatives. It attracts sponsorship, gets more people to the game. The bottom line is, he has to come out and perform. I'm sure that's his expectation as well."
Renouf only has to look as far as his former teammate to see what happens when signings go wrong – "busts", as they call them in American sports.
Ben Barba moved to Brisbane still cloaked in the glow of a Dally M season but never looked once like regaining his form, eventually being shuffled off to the Sharks when Wayne Bennett hit town.
Bennett, in turn, recruited Adam Blair, who was one of the best forwards in the world when he was at the Storm but could never justify the pay packet in three up-and-down years in the orange and black.
Add Darius Boyd to that list, a Bennett purchase at the Knights, then Brisbane, where he would snap an Achilles before ever setting foot on the field. Hundreds of thousands of dollars went up in smoke.
The Titans would hope for maximum impact from Cherry-Evans but some buys are slow-burners, requiring exactly what most fans don't posess: patience. Yet often, it's worth the wait before passing judgment, while, on other occasions, the player may be the spark of a chain reaction.
Roy Asotasi moved from the Bulldogs to South Sydney in 2007, helping the club to its first finals appearance in more than 20 years. Hindsight shows him to be the rock on which the current Rabbitohs have been built, only leaving a year before the long-awaited premiership in 2014.
Chris Sandow was the target of a big-money raid on Souths to Parramatta at the end of 2011 and has produced gold in stretches, dug up rocks in others. At his best, he simply wins them games.
Perhaps the best examples of both ends of the recruiting spectrum have unfolded in Brisbane. In 1997, Gorden Tallis moved to the Broncos, helping them win a Super League title then a grand final, in which he won the Clive Churchill Medal. He's now regarded as a club legend.
The worst? Somebody at the South Queensland Crushers thought it would be a good idea to sign Wallaby lock Garrick Morgan when the team launched in 1995.
It wasn't.
