Jarryd Hayne played NFL but he’s a long way from the ultimate pro, New England Patriots star Tom Brady
PAUL KENT: Tom Brady is the consummate professional footballer. George Best is known as a cautionary tale. What will be said when we reflect on Jarryd Hayne’s career?
BURIED in a recent Sports Illustrated magazine is an interview with Tom Brady, the pin-up for the modern man who realises there is sport and nothing else in this world.
Brady led the New England Patriots back from a 28-3 halftime deficit in the most recent Super Bowl to become the greatest quarterback in NFL history.
No other quarterback has five Super Bowl victories. No other quarterback ever led his team back from such a deficit. No other quarterback …
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Brady is 40. He believes he can play at least another five years and possibly even to 50.
What makes him firm in this belief is an attention to his work that cannot be beaten. Brady is, they say, the consummate professional. He leaves nothing to chance in his preparation.
But what constitutes a professional nowadays?
For many years now the NRL has considered it a professional game based on the very solid notion that every player derives the majority of his income from playing in the NRL.
Professionalism is not simply about finances, though. It is a state of mind, an attitude, and it is all the difference.
The level of professionalism in the NRL is revealed in the peripheral conversations. Players hated Monday night football because they were forced to stay home all weekend. They like Friday night games because it gives them the weekend to party.
The small public concession they make to that is they are young men, too.
We see coaches go to post-match press conferences lamenting their side “just didn’t turn up today”. The obvious question is: why? They are professional players, paid to play, trained to perform for 80 minutes a week and for which they have all week to prepare.
There should be no excuse for missing your one assignment for the week.
And so we look to Jarryd Hayne, standing tall after the Titans on Monday sided with him in his small war with coach Neil Henry.
As trouble grew between them, sparked by Hayne’s indifference to hard training and Henry’s frustration at it, an alternative narrative emerged.
I wrote of it on Monday, of Hayne responding to the criticism by hitting it hard on the training paddock but ultimately pulling up as his body broke down under the workload.
Hayne was a famously comfortable trainer at the Eels.
His talent was more than enough to get him through.
At the same time Hayne was cruising through his development years, tapping in to his considerable talent, the likes of Johnathan Thurston and Cameron Smith and Billy Slater were punishing their young legs at their clubs.
What all the experts tell you they were doing was putting the miles in their legs so that now, as they grow older, they can limit their training to protect their bodies against wear and tear because the miles are already there.
And like our very best, Tom Brady also did the early work.
LISTEN! The Monday Bunker panel debates the Jarryd Hayne saga, the Bulldogs’ salary cap drama and the intrigue surrounding the top eight.
He also continues to re-evaluate and work like a professional every day. He took a month off after winning the Super Bowl but then, still on holidays, headed back to the Patriots’ training facility to review every offensive play from the team’s 2016 season. Twice.
Wasted talent is as much a part of sport as footballs and time clocks. Brady will never be a cautionary tale.
As his body has aged, he has changed how he trains. He believes he needs to be more supple to avoid injuries that come from age, so he stretches for hours every day. He gets a soft-tissue massage after every session. Eats organically. Plays brain games daily.
Has that opportunity gone for Hayne, already closed as he attempts to wrestle it open?
For the pure sports fans, success is measured differently.
Last month, ESPN aired a 30 For 30 documentary about George Best, the great Northern Ireland soccer player who squandered his talent when he drank to the bottom of the bottle far too often.
Best might have been the best of all time. He is sport’s most famous cautionary tale yet the doco missed the most famous story of Best, maybe because the story is so good it borders on apocryphal. Hey, it might be.
It goes that Best was staying in a rich five-star hotel with his future wife Angie Janes, a Playboy bunny, lounging on the bed in her negligee when Best decided to order some French champagne.
Soon after there was a knock at the door and a little Irish waiter carried the champagne in and surveyed the scene around him.
“Can I ask a question?” asked the waiter.
Best nodded.
“Where did it all go wrong?”
Originally published as Jarryd Hayne played NFL but he’s a long way from the ultimate pro, New England Patriots star Tom Brady