He is the crowd-pleasing powerhouse who now has the Melbourne Storm in his sights and Titans centre Konrad Hurrell has vowed to continue to "leave his brain at home" in order to kick-start his side's finals aspirations.
Taking two wins into the Representative Round bye has enabled the Titans to move into 12th position and look forward with some optimism but they face a genuine test of their credentials against Melbourne in the Suncorp Stadium double-header next Saturday night.
Having missed the Round 5 loss to the Warriors and Round 7 loss to the Broncos, Hurrell returned along with Jarryd Hayne in Round 8 against the Sharks and ran for more than 150 metres in each of his two games back, adding two tries in the 38-8 rout of the Knights, his second double against Newcastle this season.
Choosing to miss Tonga's Test against Fiji this weekend in order to give an ongoing ankle injury a chance to heal, Hurrell said that his recent good performances can be attributed to adopting a simplistic approach to his role in the team.
"A little brain around training and stuff but when it comes to the game I guess I leave the brain at home and just bring the energy," Hurrell said.
"If I think too much about stuff that's when I muck it up so I guess I just leave the brain at home when it comes to game time and just catch the ball and run hard.
"If I think too much about it that's when everything just goes out the window."
Appreciated as much for his powerful runs coming out of the Titans end as he is for his sense of humour around the playing group, co-captain Kevin Proctor says that Hurrell's energetic charges have a way of inspiring the rest of the team.
"He's like having another front-rower out in the centres. He steams onto that ball and gets the sets going," said Proctor, who gave Hurrell his player's player vote against the Knights.
"He's a very energetic player and when he does something really well he picks up the boys and he normally does that a couple of times a game. Hopefully he keeps playing like this."
A perceived bad attitude at training saw Hurrell fall out of favour with the Warriors 12 months ago and make a mid-season switch but the 25-year-old has received nothing but praise from the Titans coaching staff since his arrival.
Assistant coach Terry Matterson said that Hurrell has been an absolute pleasure to coach while coach Neil Henry can even forgive an error every now and again given the effort he puts into each performance.
"He's been really good since he's been here," Henry said.
"He gets upset with making errors and he made up for it. I'm glad he did because he's a hard marker on his own performance too.
"He came up with a couple of big plays [against Newcastle] and he's been very good for us.
"He was under a little bit of duress with his ankle as well, he got a knock on it early but he battled on and he's great for momentum as he gets fast play-the-balls for the team."
Admitting that he needed the bye in order to get his ankle right, Hurrell said it is now important that the Titans not only carry forward the momentum out of the Newcastle win but take it up a notch against the premiership front-runners.
"The bye was a good thing for myself, get the little niggling injury into rehab and do all the little things with the physio," said Hurrell.
"The ankle issue just comes and goes, it's not a big deal, it just gets sore sometimes and then goes away and comes back. This one week off we'll make sure it's all right.
"The week after the bye we need to bring the tone up a little bit.
"It's going to be a tough game against the Storm after the bye so hopefully the boys will bring the energy back into training.
"It always starts from our training and preparation and hopefully we'll get another win."
