Will Jarryd Hayne's career at the Gold Coast Titans end in a whimper or a bang?

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This was published 7 years ago

Will Jarryd Hayne's career at the Gold Coast Titans end in a whimper or a bang?

By Peter FitzSimons
Updated

The Jarryd Hayne thing?

It is fascinating on so many levels at once, I have had to put another man on, just to keep track. Hayne, as you'll recall, is the extravagantly talented "Kid from Minto", for whom one lifelong dream was never enough! When his first dream was fulfilled – becoming a huge star in the NRL, dominating entire games with the Eels and unleashing moves that no one had ever seen before – he moved on to his NFL dream. There, against all odds, he actually started a couple of matches with the San Francisco 49ers before pursuing the next new dream of playing for the Fiji sevens team in the Rio Olympics, before then deciding he wanted to win Wimbledon and open the bowling for Australia at the same time and ...

And, all right you got me. I'm just kidding about the last two. I think. They, likely, are just his unannounced dreams. In fact, when it turned out they'd need to be the Fiji twenty-sevens before he'd make the cut for Rio, the "Hayne Plane", decided to come in for an emergency landing on Runway One at Coolangatta, to play for the Titans ... and that is where the trouble started. (And I don't just mean having troubling episodes with bikies. I mean on the football field.)

For despite some early flashes of brilliance with the Gold Coast team, his whole effort so far has been reminiscent of the famous line about Wagner's operas, that they "contain some wonderful moments ... but terrible half hours".

On the outer: Jarryd Hayne hasn't covered himself in glory at the Titans so far.

On the outer: Jarryd Hayne hasn't covered himself in glory at the Titans so far.Credit: Getty Images

The exemplar was Hayne's play in the Titan's opening match of the season, last Sunday, against the Roosters. For most of the match he was simply invisible, and never moreso than when the Roosters ran in four tries in the first half alone. The Hayne of 2009, and even 2014, would have unleashed scything tackles to stop the Eastern Suburbs men in their tracks. Instead he appeared to use the "drift defence" – sorta drifting here and sorta drifting there – but not doing anything constructive to stop the rot. And then, after the tries were scored, instead of being one of the team leaders, you'd expect a player of his calibre to be, thundering behind the goal-line, laying down the law, sorting out the positioning, holding other players to account, he was off-centre, more off-piste than pissed-off.

He didn't look engaged, didn't look as if he particularly cared. He looked, yes, bored. And then to the moment ... Twelve minutes into the second half, the Titans halfback put the ball up in a bomb and who should suddenly appear, effortlessly soaring half-a-metre higher than the Roosters' defence and his own teammates, but – is it a bird, is it plane? No, it's the Hayne-plane! – Jarryd Hayne himself, for a superbly athletic try. And then he just as quickly disappeared again.

And, of course, we've all seen the stories since, and read the comments of his own coach. The guts of it is that while we the people are underwhelmed by his performance, it is nothing compared to how the Titans players themselves, and likely even the coach, feel. The reports that have come back have it that he returned from the summer break as big as a heffalump at 106 kilograms, and showed such little interest in training that he was removed from the senior players' group and fined $10K for his trouble. Great story! It is one confirmed by carefully crafted comments from the coach, noting they are dealing with Jarryd as they go along, and narky tweets from Hayne himself raging at whoever leaked the yarn.

Where to from here?

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I see two possibilities:

1. Hayne gets the message, gets interested, gets his arse moving, and realises that it is fair to no one to take the money and do bugger-all to justify it. At that point he'll be the hero of the piece once more, and the most compelling player to watch in the game.

2. Hayne continues to act as if he is bigger than the game, at which point the Titans will realise they have made a colossal error in signing him, seek to part at the first opportunity. At this point Hayne will likely look for another rugby league club on a vastly reduced salary or perhaps pursue another dream. (See TS Eliot: "This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper.")

Either way, the most impressive thing out of the whole affair is the Titans club itself, particularly the players. A lesser crowd would just keep their mouths shut, content to be breathing in the very air that the big star is breathing out. And if the star is not putting in like the rest of them – is like an old guide dog, because he is "bludging on the blind", as the old saying goes – then so be it. That is the prerogative of stars.

But the Titans didn't do that. They called Hayne out on it, and made it clear that their culture is hard-working, and playing for each other. Bravo. That culture, in the long-term, is the one which will triumph. Hayne must come to the realisation that he is dead lucky to have a chance to be be a part of it, not the other way round.

Twitter: @Peter_Fitz

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