Jarryd Hayne has huge balls and he did what I couldn’t: Wendell Sailor

JARRYD Hayne wasn’t the first NRL star to be made an offer from the NFL. This legend knocked America back.

WHEN I first heard Jarryd Hayne was going to try and play in the NFL, I didn’t think he was going to make it.

I thought the same thing when I first got offered the chance to try and play in the NFL.

I never got offered a contract, but the Denver Broncos wanted me to go to America and see if I could make it.

Brisbane Broncos had a really good relationship with Denver and we started sharing training secrets and strength and conditioning information in the mid-’90s.

It became pretty common to see Denver assistant coaches and training staff around our club.

In 1995 some of our Brisbane coaches were invited to study Denver’s facilities and their training practices.

They were just as interested in what we were doing as our coaches were in what Denver was doing over there.

I guess that’s why I got pulled aside after training one day by one of the coaching coordinators from Denver.

He didn’t say much and he never sugar-coated it, but I still remember him saying I was good enough to make it in the NFL. Probably as a running back.

“We think you’ve got some talent,” he said.

“Would you be interested in coming to one of our pre-season camps?”

That was it.

I think they wanted to see how a rugby league player would do in the NFL.

Not everything has gone Jarryd Hayne’s way.

Even back then I loved the NFL and I loved watching guys like Emmitt Smith, Jerry Rice and Deion Sanders. My favourite player was Shannon Sharpe, who I got to meet a year later when I did an end of season trip to the USA with Gorden Tallis, Darren Lockyer, Anthony Mundine and Ben Walker.

Of course I was tempted to give it a go.

But then I thought about those superstars I just mentioned and I thought there’s no way I could match it with those guys.

This might sound strange, but there’s no way my ego was big enough for me to think I could go over there and be just as successful in the USA as I was starting to here.

I thought guys like me were a dime a dozen. There’s no way I could have made it.

The risk was too great and the stakes were too high so I never got serious about going over there.

That’s what I admire about Jarryd the most.

It took massive balls for him to do what he did.

You’d have to have some crazy self-belief to think you could just go over there and start playing in one of the most elite sporting leagues in the world.

Even Jarryd will admit to having his doubts. Every athlete fights the doubt of failure. Jarryd’s no regular rookie and I thought his age (27) would basically cost him his shot.

More importantly we’re talking about the NFL. Only the elite of the elite make it onto an NFL franchise roster. It was a huge gamble for him.

And look what he was gambling on.

He gave up the NRL right at the time he was probably the biggest star in the game again. He’d just won his second Dally M Medal.

Jarryd Hayne has never looked a fish out of water.

It takes some serious balls to give up the promise of success in one sport to gamble on the slimmest chance of success in a completely foreign sport.

It’s crazy.

But, just like a lot of people are realising, Jarryd is a once-in-a-lifetime talent.

That’s why he looks like he’ll make it onto the San Francisco 49ers roster. He’s one of the best athletes in Australia.

That doesn’t mean every NRL player could crack the NFL.

Comments in recent weeks from guys like Jason Taumalolo and Martin Taupau that they could make it in the NFL were more than a bit premature.

They’re both great athletes who I love to watch, but they both have so much still to achieve in rugby league.

Jarryd had nothing left to prove in the NRL, guys like Taupau and Taumalolo still have a huge upside to their games.

Those players need to show Jarryd some respect. His success doesn’t mean every NRL player could make it. Far from it.

He’s made it look easy, but it’s not. Only he could have done what he has.