The inside story on how the Gold Coast Titans landed Jarryd Hayne
FOUNDATION Titan Luke O’Dwyer has emerged as a key figure in luring Jarryd Hayne to the Gold Coast in one of the biggest signing coups in rugby league history.
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FOUNDATION Titan Luke O’Dwyer has emerged as a key figure in luring Jarryd Hayne to the Gold Coast in one of the biggest signing coups in rugby league history.
O’Dwyer, a former player and sponsorship manager at the Titans who now works for major sponsor TripADeal, spoke to Hayne on Tuesday before the tri-code superstar put pen to paper to agree to a two-year deal with the Titans worth $1.2 million a season.
Before his time at the Titans, O’Dwyer played at Parramatta where he was a teammate of then-teenage prodigy Hayne, with the pair helping the Eels snare a premier league title in 2005.
With a tense atmosphere surrounding negotiations given Hayne’s reluctance to break ties with his junior club, O’Dwyer’s ability to break the ice was crucial.
It was just a simple: “G’day buddy, how’ve you been” but the presence of a familiar face was just what Hayne needed as he mulled over his future.
“It broke the mood a bit,’’ O’Dwyer said.
“We’ve got a bit of a history from when I played with him at Parramatta and we won a premiership together in 2005 in premier league.
“I think it put his mind at ease that he could relate with my face and our relationship together.’’
HOW THE DEAL WAS DONE
O’Dwyer’s visit with TripADeal owners was one of several secret meetings Hayne held on the Gold Coast yesterday in venues from coffee shops to chairwoman Rebecca Frizelle’s home before the deal was sealed in his hotel room at 10pm on Tuesday.
Perched around the breakfast bar in Frizelle’s kitchen, Hayne quizzed Titans bosses on the club’s governance and stability.
It was a morning escalation of negotiations which began with a laugh more than two months ago and finished in a QT Hotel room late Tuesday night.
“Up until that point, we still had no contract and we had no reason to believe that we would definitely get the deal across the line,” CEO Graham Annesley said.
“It was a long day, but a good outcome.”
Facing the media scrum yesterday, Frizelle hadn’t slept since the ink met the last page of one of the richest deals in NRL history.
“He’d done a lot of his own homework, he’s a smart guy — he’d done a lot of research on the Titans, he respects Neil Henry as the coach,” she said.
“He was very interested in our governance as a board.
“We knew that he was coming back — I think it was before he’d even hit Fiji we knew he was coming back — and Neil said `Bec, what do you think of Jarryd Hayne?’ and we all just burst out laughing.
“I don’t think anyone’s ever believed we could be serious contenders.”
THE EELS
Discussions were initially held with Hayne’s manager Wayne Beavis before the Titans met with Hayne on Tuesday to finalise the deal.
Few outside Titans headquarters believed the Gold Coast had any chance of landing Hayne, especially after comments the 28-year-old had made when leaving the code to chase his NFL dream that he would rejoin the Eels if he returned to rugby league.
But Parramatta failed to present a formal contract, despite the Eels saying the “communicated an offer’’ to Hayne’s management this week.
“I was going back (but) how can you go back when you’ve got no contract on the table,’’ a genuinely torn Hayne said.
“It’s hard to explain the situation down there but they really do need to fix the inside, they need to really get a strong board together.
“The biggest thing (about deciding on the Titans) was all the stuff that’s been happening with Parramatta and the board and the NRL.
“When I first came back from Fiji, we were getting word there was no way (the NRL) would register (an Eels) contract with the fighting that was going on and the innuendo. It was a bit of a shemozzle.’’
Annesley as early as May said the Gold Coast would be open to discussions with Hayne, with “any club in their right mind’’ likely to jump at the opportunity to sign him.
It was not until later though that the Titans decided to launch a legitimate attempt to snare Hayne and engaged in talks with his manager.
SERIOUS CONTENDERS
Dragons, Knights, Eels — but “not the Broncos” — had been among the “four or five” clubs in Beavis’s ear since news broke of his departure from the United States.
For the Titans, it was former chief operating officer Brian Canavan who picked up the phone and dialled him first.
“What’s Jarryd doing? We’d have an interest, if he’s interested in coming to the Coast,” he told Beavis.
Coming to the Coast was — in the absence of a firm deal from his beloved Eels — the lesser of a host of evils.
“If he was going to play for anyone, he wasn’t going to play for another club in Sydney, so this became a real live option for him,” Beavis said.
“I had plenty of clubs (interested), I wasn’t short on clubs.
“There were four or five — mainly Sydney clubs ... not the Broncos.”
For Beavis, the Gold Coast meetings began on Thursday. By Monday it was time to bring his charge to town.
“I rang him on Monday when I went to the game and said ‘you’d better come up here today’.
“He said `I can’t because I’ve got something on’ and I said `well, be here tomorrow’ and he was — and he never left.”
THE MAJOR PLAYERS
Hayne’s contract is one of the biggest in the history of the NRL.
Hayne will make about a third of his $1.2 million a year in third party deals organised by his manager and Gold Coast businesses who leapt at the opportunity to be involved with the superstar.
A source said third-party sponsors had lined up to support Hayne despite being left with a “bad taste in their mouths’’ after Daly Cherry Evans backflipped on a four-season deal last year.
The sponsors had been ready to support Cherry Evans’ move to the Coast and despite being burnt when he decided to stay with Manly, Hayne’s star power was enough to lure them back again.
O’Dwyer’s employers TripADeal have also emerged as major players in the deal, coming in to support the Titans in their marquee player offer.
The company only joined the Titans as a sponsor this year but have made their mark already, playing a part in extending the contract of young halfback Kane Elgey before stumping up again for Hayne.
The Titans were also shrewd in their management of funds after the Cherry Evans debacle, refusing to enter the player market for the sake of it and having space under the salary cap to allow Hayne to return to the field this year, something that was a key for Hayne, who has played little football in the past 18 months.
THE SYSTEM
In the past year, the Titans have pulled themselves out of the deepest of holes.
“This is one of the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle that we’ve been working on for 18 months or two years, “ says Darryl Kelly whose time and money has been relentlessly ploughed into filling them.
“If you listen to what Jarryd had to say, one of the reasons why he’s here is because of the stability of the board and the management structure.
“I definitely feel vindicated.”
That doggedness in bringing the team back from an on-and-off-field brink was a key lure for Hayne.
“We’ve been consistently there the whole time saying `we’re still here, we’re still here, we’re still here — when you get serious come and sit down’,” Kelly said.
“There were a lot of discussions with Wayne Beavis and then, over the last 24-48 hours with Jarryd directly, just to bring it all together because it is a big personal decision for him.
“I think he will be happy here.”
HAPPY HERE
“He knows he can make a big difference here, he’s excited,” says Frizelle of her new charge.
“He visits his friends up here pretty regularly so he knows the Gold Coast well.
“He is excited to join the Titans, we spent a lot of time with him yesterday.”
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