Paul Kent: The false reality that poisoned Jarryd Hayne’s world
Jarryd Hayne’s group of enablers, yes-men and hero worshippers can blame themselves for playing a small part in why the former NRL star is where he is today, writes Paul Kent.
Opinion
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Right to the very end the false reality that poisoned Jarryd Hayne’s world was on display.
When he was led away to jail, he left behind a group of enablers, yes-men and hero worshippers who headed outside, some of whom found their judgment so clouded by Hayne’s fate that they showed aggression at the victim and her supporters. Police had to intervene.
One man spat at the victim.
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It is irrelevant that despite the conclusion the jury reached, they believe Hayne’s version over the victims, as they will claim. Or that they were angry at what they believe was an injustice, which they will also claim.
A court had made its decision, based on evidence, not emotion. Hayne has now lodged an appeal.
The lack of respect for authority and for decency failed to register with Hayne’s supporters, unable to understand that they are the very weapons that also brought down their hero.
These people can blame themselves for playing a small part in why Hayne is where he is today.
Few ever learned to say no to Hayne, and he did not like it when they did.
That, essentially, is what the court found.
If the NRL does not witness this and shake to their heels, then it is inevitable it will happen again.
There were countless times strong discipline and the game could have saved Hayne from behaving “entitled”, to use Judge Helen Syme’s adjective, that cost him his freedom.
Yet Hayne rarely saw it, right to the end.
His defence barrister, Richard Pontello SC, argued on Thursday that Hayne had suffered punishment enough by losing a $500,000 contract with St George Illawarra.
Being kind, it was a defence completely out of touch with reality. Anybody sent to jail loses employment. And whatever their salary is, it means everything to them.
Why should Hayne’s high salary, or privileged job with the Dragons, deserve extra consideration?
Even Hayne seemed to believe it was a price enough to pay.
Hayne was in his second stint at Parramatta at the time the rape occurred in 2018.
By then, the Eels had shown remarkable leniency towards him.
The Eels brought him back in 2018 after Hayne had called coach Brad Arthur in 2014 to tell him he was walking out on the club, mid-contract, to chase a start in the NFL.
Arthur did not have to release him because a lot of his planning, talent-wise and salary cap, was built around Hayne’s presence at the club. But he did, unwilling to stop a young man chasing his dreams.
The sweetener was Hayne promised to return to the Eels if the NFL experiment failed.
Which he did not.
After returning early from his deal with the San Francisco 49ers, which included a civil lawsuit he settled out of court with a woman making claims against him similar to the actions for which he is now jailed, he signed a contract with Gold Coast and said he was disappointed Parramatta never made him an offer.
Then Eels interim chief executive Bevan Paul pointed out a contract was offered to Hayne 48 hours earlier. Arthur said the reason he did not return to Parramatta was the Eels were unwilling to go as high as the Gold Coast offer.
Yet it failed at the Gold Coast.
Hayne arrived with much fanfare, a hefty third-party sponsorship and the goodwill of an entire code.
Privately, coach Neil Henry was worried, and rightfully so, even telling the club.
Henry was a rugby league lifer and knew well the reputation Hayne carried for being entitled and selfish.
For a while, both tried to make it work but it soon began to unravel. Hayne was the wrong fit, Henry unable to find the key to getting him going, the leadership group having issues with his attitude.
Henry was a coach trying to build a culture on the foundations of discipline and values, and his star player was above that.
Yes-men and enablers, telling him he was right.
It began with Hayne short-changing his teammates. Small things, where Hayne behaved as if he should be treated differently from his teammates.
The Titans trained hard and, when it got too hard, Hayne would regularly claim he needed a toilet break. Let them do all the running.
To keep him on the training paddock, the Titans secretly padlocked the toilets and when Hayne asked for a key one day, they claimed only council could unlock the padlocks.
Henry fought hard to teach Hayne humility and sacrifice, all for the good of the team, but the friction only grew.
Once the brawl erupted publicly, the Titans, under NRL management at the time, showed the same weakness and deficiency of character that was always surrounding Hayne and they sacked Henry.
They sided with talent. It was a well-trodden formula, present at many vital stages of not only Hayne’s career, but his life.
On Friday, two of his former teammates, Tony Williams and Krisnan Inu, attacked the victim and the decision on social media. Williams was immediately sacked by the club he was about to join.
Trace it through his Parramatta coaches and there is a litany of them brought undone by their superstar player, the man who never heard the word “no”.
And to think they nearly got it right in the beginning.
As Brian Smith was fighting to save his job in 2006, the Eels 2-7 after 10 rounds, including the bye, some around Smith urged him to pick the kid called Hayne.
Such was his talent, he would surely help the Eels win a few games, the quick fix.
Yet even with his job increasingly in jeopardy, Smith refused.
Hayne was entitled and needed to learn what it was to be a professional.
He was talented but Smith wanted him to understand there was more to the game than talent, more to being a man than privilege, and believed with patience and time he could teach Hayne that.
Smith knew that too often in professional sport the first casualty of talent is accountability.
Smith was coaching for the greater good, not for next weekend, and he knew Hayne would ultimately be a better man for it.
Then Smith was sacked before round 11 and Jason Taylor was promoted to interim coach. By the weekend, Taylor had Hayne on the wing and he would go on to win the Dally M rookie of the year.
Talent was enough at the time but, as time showed, it came at the cost of a whole lot more.
SHORT SHOT
Only in the improbable world of professional sport could a person publicly lambast their partner’s boss and it be deemed acceptable.
Ricky Stuart claims he didn’t kick any plastic chairs when he first heard Joe Tapine’s wife, Kirsten, had taken to social media to criticise his bench rotation, which included leaving her husband on the sideline for 50 minutes.
The whole scenario at Canberra is representative of much of the world today, where the current generation cannot have their delicate sensibilities questioned without accusations of being too tough on them.
Every coach in the NRL will tell you how tough, because of that, it is to coach the modern footballer. The AFL, too. And soccer.
Tapine has been playing poorly but does not like criticism of his performance, so Stuart had to find a way to find improvement.
The whole situation at Canberra is turned upside down.
Rather than losing the dressing room, Stuart is doing the opposite, corralling the few loose units before they stray too far away to be useful again. If the dressing room was lost, this would be impossible.
As for social media, there should be a law introduced that immediately shuts down an account the moment a person’s posts outnumber their followers. Clearly, it would show, their comments just aren’t resonating.
Originally published as Paul Kent: The false reality that poisoned Jarryd Hayne’s world
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