Paul Kent: Ballad of Jarryd Hayne becoming a cautionary tale

IT seems that Jarryd Hayne picked up more than a helmet in the NFL. In the land where personality is king, the curse of ego got him.

Jarryd Hayne has failed to hit his NRL heights with the Titans..

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JARRYD Hayne returned to Australia with a gold star reputation.

It was little more than a year ago and Hayne was a conqueror.

At his best he beat the NRL like no player ever did. He won two Dally M Player of the Year gongs, as unstoppable as male pattern baldness, and he bankrolled all that into a trial with the San Francisco 49ers.

A lifelong ambition, he told us, and off he went. He was Kingsford Smith, Burke and Wills, a young Errol Flynn. Everybody wanted to be No. 38.

It was easy to admire and he took Australia on the ride with him.

The Gold Coast Titans recognised that and paid Hayne overs to play for their team. New sponsors were lined up. He paid his salary in their first three home gates. He not only dominated games, we saw, he generated cash.

Yet in little more than 12 months all that is left of that gold star reputation is dust.

Hayne, it seems, picked up more than a helmet in the NFL. In the land where personality is king, the curse of ego got him.

Jarryd Hayne left the NRL to try his hand at NFL with the San Francisco 49ers.

When Hayne got back to Australia he wanted to train the way he wanted to train. He failed to buy into the team-first culture coach Neil Henry was building. Both would have been excusable if not entirely forgivable if Hayne was still lighting up the field. But he wasn’t.

Outside that Hayne also struggled to fulfil his other obligation, the one of Titans’ chief salesman.

He partied with bikies, an Instagram star. He turned up at a school as part of his sponsorship with an internet security company and when they displayed his smartphone to show the kids the necessity for online safety, online porn jumped up. They had to claim they were hacked.

The embarrassment of it all.

Something had to give, and so The Ballad of Jarryd Hayne took another turn Thursday morning when Gold Coast chief executive Graham Annesley began preparing his breakfast.

Anybody that knows Annesley can easily picture him in his striped pyjamas, long sleeved and slightly starched, carefully preparing breakfast before wrapping his cheese sandwich for lunch later in the day.

Annesley’s phone lit up and the name across it said “Rothfield” and that was the end of that morning. By lunchtime his phone was exhausted, the battery nearly dead, and he was not a step closer to the office.

It must have been excruciating.

The Titans were blindsided by Rothfield’s revelation that Hayne wanted to quit.

Jarryd Hayne has failed to hit his NRL heights with the Titans.

The club had basically given Hayne the keys to the building when it backed him in the battle with the sacked coach Henry in August. This latest twist is exactly why the Titans pulled the wrong rein.

Still, once the decision was made the new coach, Garth Brennan, began talking up how he wanted to use Hayne so consistently that, even as news was breaking that Hayne wanted out, he was still out on message.

The club’s trust in Hayne has backfired.

Hayne has disregarded what the Titans have done for him. They sacked a good coach in favour of him after a meeting revealed neither could work with the other. Forget the values that were at stake.

Brennan replaced Henry and one of his first decisions was to take a pay cut so the club could afford to lure Hayden Knowles away from Sydney Roosters. Knowles is Hayne’s former trainer at Parramatta who Hayne took to San Francisco and who supposedly had the key to get the best out of him physically, which is where it began to break down with Henry.

There goes that, too.

The Titans backed Jarryd Hayne in the battle with Neil Henry.

Annesley continues to play it as straight as the crease down the front of his denim jeans. He issued a short statement saying the club has had no approach from Hayne and has not spoken since the season ended and they expected him to turn up in the new year when he was due to return.

Hayne went the familiar route, social media to deny the claims. He might have done that to deny a problem with Henry, too.

However Parramatta insiders have confirmed Hayne’s representatives have been negotiating for a month. The Eels have room in their salary cap and could accommodate Hayne in their cap with only slight adjustment.

The sell is Hayne wants to return to Sydney to be closer to his daughter.

It is as messy as it can get.

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There is a thought around town that Hayne should return to Sydney and Parramatta where, it goes, he plays his best football.

Dear oh dear.

The more accurate assessment is that Hayne more often plays his best when he rolls into the final season of his contract. Hayne has sent more than one coach to counselling in his time at the Eels. None lasted more than two seasons with him.

Where this went wrong is anybody’s guess.

What we do know is The Ballad of Jarryd Hayne should be a celebration, a happy tune with chimes. Increasingly it is a cautionary tale.

With each step Hayne is breaking his contract with the game. Not that contract registered at NRL headquarters but the one with the fans.

That’s what Australian coach Mal Meninga was speaking to when he said Thursday Hayne “hasn’t played well enough” to leave the Titans yet. Meninga was simply speaking to the point Hayne has barely begun giving the Titans a return on their investment and he still owes them.

But in the modern world everybody owes the player.

The Gold Coast pay Hayne $1 million a year and yet go better without him.

And somehow Hayne back in Parramatta colours is supposed to fix this?

Annesley, now out of his pyjamas and feeling far more comfortable, must be praying the Eels make an offer.

Originally published as Paul Kent: Ballad of Jarryd Hayne becoming a cautionary tale