After securing a brace of tries in Cronulla's 40-18 win over the Wests Tigers on Saturday, winger Valentine Holmes has now set his sights on becoming the most-prolific try-scoring Shark in a season.
Having scored his 15th and 16th tries of the season, Holmes is now three short of David Peachey's 1999 record when the former NSW Origin representative scored 19 tries.
Holmes has at least three games to come up with a further four tries to break the record with Cronulla now guaranteed a place in the Telstra Premiership finals series.
"I wouldn't mind beating it or even drawing with it. He was one of the legends of the club and to get up there would mean a lot," Holmes told NRL.com.
"It's pretty exciting. I didn't realise the record was 19. I thought by far he would've had more in a season or someone like Andrew Ettingshausen would've been up there. But if I get there, I'd be pretty happy about it."
One of the game's quickest players, the majority of Holmes's tries are a by-product of his speed. It's the key factor of his performances that he puts down to his work with Sharks' Physical Performance Manager Andrew Gray.
"He is very good with his techniques and running plans which plays a big difference," Holmes said.
"He seems to think I've gained [speed] throughout the year and hopefully I can keep working on that."
Holmes said he had been blown away by the Sharks' transformation since his NRL debut back in Round 21 last year.
Considering it took Holmes nine games (including his first three of this season) to earn his first victory in the NRL you can't blame him for being impressed by the team's achievements this season.
"Coming off last year and to come last it'll mean everything to the team to finish in the top four [this year]. The boys have really stuck in at training since day one," Holmes said.
"It's been tough and the boys have been training really hard to turn around our last season into what we have now.
"We think we have secured a spot somewhere in the finals but we want to try and push for the top four now.
"We have pretty just flipped the coin haven't we really? So hopefully we can keep that going for the finals."
