Daly Cherry-Evans has arrived at the end of forever

Years ago, when Daly Cherry-Evans was merely in his early 30s, he'd say that he was going to play forever and he was only ever half-joking.

Every time he'd be asked about his future, be it at the beginning of a season or at the end, he'd grin widely and assure whoever wanted to know that he, in fact, would never, ever stop.

Most of the time it felt like a gag, a way for one of the slickest operators in the NRL to disarm the inquiry and Cherry-Evans follow with all the usual patter we hear from the greybeards — that he'd play as long as his body held up or as long as he was still enjoying it.

Plenty say that but Cherry-Evans has lived it. He lived it long enough that he reached the end of the "lifetime" deal he once signed with Manly, long enough that younger men than him succumbed to the ravages of age and long enough that maybe the joke was on us the whole time for not believing him in the first place.

It is only now, a few months before he turns 38 years old, that Cherry-Evans has finally arrived at the end of forever.

Win or lose, the Sydney Roosters sudden-death semifinal against Cronulla on Saturday is the beginning of the last days, the ones that seemed like they would never arrive.

A defeat will mark Cherry-Evans's final NRL match before he links with Hull FC in Super League next year where's he's odds on to, at least once, play with or against someone a full two decades younger than him.

A win will push the Roosters into a preliminary final against the Dolphins and keep the dream of a farewell premiership alive.

If the Tricolours do manage to go all the way, Cherry-Evans will break Lote Tuqiri's record for the longest gap between grand final wins by one season.

That premiership back in 2011 is still definitional to Cherry-Evans and what he's been for all this time.

In becoming the first rookie halfback to win a grand final since 1978 and because he was one of Manly's best through the finals and on the big day in their win over the Warriors, Cherry-Evans was able to transcend many of the slings and arrows launched during the rise of franchise playmakers.

Instead of the typical hero journey most halfbacks endure, with its peaks and valleys and rises and falls, Cherry-Evans's success as a rookie gave him a kind of instant validation.

There was never any talk of what he might be one day once he matures, or what he would eventually become once he developed this part of his game or not.

There was no debate whether he would one day be enough to lead a team to glory because he had already done it. It was instant proof of concept.

So many of young halfbacks are defined by their future, the possibility of what they might be, but ever since that first season, Cherry-Evans has instead existed in a blissful and seemingly eternal present.

His game has changed in subtle ways since that first year with Manly but through a bird's-eye view the similarities of his 16-year career is remarkable.

This season was the 15th of those years where he managed at least 20 games and he has as many try assists this year at age 37 as he did the year he turned 25.

Old halves are supposed to run less but his return in that part of his game this year (51 run metres per game and five line breaks from 24 matches) is not miles away from his return as a rookie (57 per game and 11 line breaks from 27 matches).

They're meant to be worse at defending as well, but this year Cherry-Evans has had the third-best tackle efficiency of his career.

That's not to say there hasn't been some ups and downs for Cherry-Evans through his long career, but because of where he started and how long he's been there it was always easy to ride out the downs because, even as he reached his mid-30s, he had more time.

A bad option or a poor game or a sprayed kick, as rare as they were, or even a season where his team didn't make the finals were easier to accept because there was always more to come. He could always come back to what he had always been.

The end of that reality was put into stark relief in Sunday's qualifying final loss to Penrith even as, at the end of all things, Cherry-Evans can absolutely still cut it in a game of such quality and intensity.

It was only a month ago that he scored both tries in a 12-6 Tricolours win over the Panthers that remains their best performance of the season.

This time, with Sam Walker sidelined, Cherry-Evans slotted back into halfback and taken the lion's share of the kicking game and his field position chess match with Brian To'o as he hunted a 40/20 in the second half was a highlight.

In the end, two kicks Cherry-Evans got wrong cost the Roosters badly. 

First it was a screwball torpedo of a thing with ten minutes left that he launched from his own 40 metre line that found the grass and seemed perfect until it took one bounce too many and trickled dead.

It was unfortunate and nothing more. Not even someone as experienced as Cherry-Evans, who will likely bring up his 450th first class game next year, can predict how a ball bounces.

Penrith rolled up the field on the seven-tackle set and took the lead through a Nathan Cleary one-pointer but it was not necessarily a death blow given Cherry-Evans is the modern day field goal king.

He's kicked 31 of them in his career, the most of anyone in the NRL era. 

He's kicked them to cap off big wins and to break stalemates at the last second — seven of them came in golden point extra time and his most recent match-winner was just a few weeks back against Newcastle. 

He's kicked them off both feet, in howling gales and monsoonal rain. 

He's never met a way he couldn't do it and he's met all the ways it can be done. 

But this time his only attempt, from inside 20 metres and right in front, was a shank the likes of which we've rarely seen during his career.

Even the best can get it wrong, but both moments brought into stark relief just how things have changed for Cherry-Evans.

Roosters coach Trent Robinson was circumspect about it after the match, pointing out that Cherry-Evans had iced games before for the Roosters and would do so again.

The former is a fact but the latter is closer to a prediction than a guarantee. 

There might still be a next week for Cherry-Evans, but it only might be. There will not be a next year.

On Saturday night against Cronulla, with Walker still out, Cherry-Evans must become the system once again. 

He will play sharp and smart, like he always does, like he always has, and maybe it will be enough to earn another day.

But after seeming ageless for so long, he is running out of tomorrows. He has reached the end of forever and after seeming immune to time for so long it is coming for him at last.

The story might not have its final chapter against the Sharks or the Dolphins, but the last page is nigh and the final days of Daly Cherry-Evans in the NRL are a reminder of how the present, after seeming fixed for so long, becomes history wholesale — not at all and then all at once.