For someone who has so confidently and constantly allowed his feet to do the talking, in grand final week Jarryd Hayne has allowed his mouth to, taunting Melbourne's attempts to hose down the impact he can have in Sunday's decider.
When it was posed to Hayne yesterday that Storm coach Craig Bellamy was confident his squad had the defensive game plan to shut the Eels fullback down, he replied, with the sort of carefree candour that has been so evident in his form: ''Good luck.''
And so Hayne became Parramatta's good luck charm in another way.
Hayne's form, and the Storm's ability to shut it down, was the most talked-about topic at yesterday's grand-final breakfast. Bellamy appeared confident enough about at least denting the Hayne factor, and said he had allowed his players significant input this week into their plans to stop his quick footwork and footballing nous.
''We know how we want to handle that situation,'' Bellamy said, when asked about the threat of Hayne stopping and even backtracking before picking his moment to attack, as he did in producing an assist for Joe Galuvao against the Bulldogs last Friday night.
''Hopefully, we'll handle it well. We're not going to lay down and get out of his road. Obviously, different teams have different mentalities on how they handle it. We always back ourselves. Everyone sees how hard he is to defend.''
Bellamy conceded he had not seen a player ''that agile and that big''.
''He's such a big guy, but he's so agile and quick,'' he said. ''It's hard, no doubt about it. You have to have some sort of plan to combat it … we've spoken about it as a team and what we think is the best way to go about it. It's easy for me to say I want you to do this, do that, but I'm not out there trying to tackle him. They are. So they've had a fair say in what they think is the best way to handle that. We'll see how it goes.''
Melbourne skipper Cameron Smith, knowing Hayne can confuse himself as much as a defender, said approaching the fullback in a straight line - rather than with a player shooting out of the defensive line as some sort of Hayne spotter - was the preferred option.
''We've done a little bit of work on him, but if you do too much you forget they've got 16 other blokes in their side that can really hurt you,'' Smith said.
''He's a very dangerous player, but we've got to try and minimise what he does, not take him out of the game. Even Jarryd said in there, whenever he's got the ball, sometimes he gets a little bit confused with what he's doing. If he doesn't know what he's doing, we don't know what he's doing. But it's working for him, and we expect the same on Sunday.''
Eels coach Daniel Anderson said he was not concerning himself with the Storm's plans to shut down Hayne, but was also toeing a ''no I in Parramatta Eels'' line when it came to his star player.
''They've got some very classy players in key positions, but as far as worrying about what they might do to 'Haynesy' - he'll handle himself, he's all right,'' Anderson said. ''But we're not an I-type team. Haynesy's been a catalyst for a lot of good things in our team, but he's the first to acknowledge that the blokes around him, the players in front of him, are providing platforms for him. Every player needs to contribute.''