Jarryd Hayne is playing American football like an Australian and that’s just one reason why we’re loving his beautiful ride

OBVIOUSLY we all love an Australian doing well overseas. But there’s one other key reason why we just can’t get enough of the Jarryd Hayne story.

SANTA CLARA, CA - AUGUST 23: Jarryd Hayne #38 of the San Francisco 49ers watches the end of the game from the sidelines against the Dallas Cowboys during a preseason game on August 23, 2015 at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California. Brian Bahr/Getty Images/AFP == FOR NEWSPAPERS, INTERNET, TELCOS & TELEVISION USE ONLY ==

WHEN you’re a young boy or girl, you dress up in the Lycra of Superman or Batman or Wonder Woman and you act like you’ve got superpowers. You don’t, but it feels good to pretend.

You go to school, leave, head out into the real world, find a job, get smacked in the face by life, and soon enough, you adjust your reality goggles and set your sights on something a fair way below superhero level.

But not Jarryd Hayne. The 27-year-old grew up in the housing commission flats of an outer Sydney suburb which you and I likely drive past on the way to somewhere better. He became a rugby league star, bought his mum a house with the proceeds, found God, found humility and then found himself wanting more.

Jarryd Hayne wasn’t dissatisfied, but the boy inside the man still had super-sized dreams. So he set his sights on a bigger sport, a bigger challenge, a bigger stage. America’s NFL.

There’s a surreal quality to the NFL. Whether you’re at the Super Bowl or watching a game on a TV screen on the other side of the world, this is a sport where the men actually look like superheroes. Where they wear helmets like Captain America and where the uniforms are even made of Lycra — or at least they look like it.

Excelling in this world was Jarryd Hayne’s dream. He’d been a superstar in Australia. Now he could be a superhero in America. But could he make it?

Events of the past week suggest that yep, he’s going to do it.

Hayne’s first trial match was impressive. Then in that second match against the mythical Dallas Cowboys, Hayne was so extraordinary it seemed he was “showing off”, as the NFL joked in a tweet.

A 34-yard gain as the @49ers RB? Ok, @jarrydhayne_1. Now you're just showing off. #DALvsSF http://t.co/fi6t1ljqQu

— NFL (@NFL) August 24, 2015

Many American sports writers have celebrated Hayne’s efforts in statistical terms which make about as much sense to most Australians as the dietary information on your cereal box. Is 23 yards a lot or a little? Is four grams of sugar in a bowl of Rice Bubbles good or bad?

What you really need to know is this: Hayne is looking like a natural out there. There are technicalities to work on, sure. There always will be in this most technical of sports. But it really is impossible to state how good Hayne looks when running in open play.

The US sports website SB Nation said it well:

“It’s easy to see the skill that made him such a star: He was incredibly elusive running with the ball in space, speedy enough to blow past some players, shifty enough to juke others. And when he ran into a defender who wasn’t in perfect position, he rarely went down, using his momentum and upper body strength to truck through weak tackle attempts.”

Just about every expert, and plenty in internet forums who aren’t, is now saying the guy is a “keeper”. That he’ll make the final 53 man roster he so desperately wants to join. The coach won’t say it publicly but you can bet he’s thinking it.

This will make a lot of Australians proud and happy, for all sorts of obvious reasons. We love to see an Australian sportsman doing well on the big stage, just as we love it when an Aussie actor wins an Oscar, or an Aussie scientist makes a breakthrough that changes people’s lives.

But there’s something more going on here. This is not just about an Aussie doing well beyond our shores. It’s about the way Hayne is doing what he’s doing.

Remember Paul Hogan’s immortal line in Crocodile Dundee when he said “That’s not a knife … THAT’S a knife!”? With every run, Hayne seems to be saying to the Yanks, that’s not a punt return, THAT’S a punt return.”

There’s a spontaneity to the way Hayne goes about his work, a sense of inventiveness, a hint of what you might call Australian attitude. In this, the most structured game on earth, Jarryd Hayne appears to be taking cues from gut instinct rather than the playbook.

Again, here’s SB Nation:

“Football is an incredibly complex game with tomes for playbooks, multifaceted strategic schemes and technically precise rules. But when Hayne catches a ball and finds himself with space, he’s following instincts. And his natural talents do the rest.”

That’s not to say Hayne is not studying the game, learning it, doing everything he can to memorise and master its endless intricacies.

“Look at him read the block in front of him,” the commentator enthused during one of Hayne’s exciting runs against Dallas. Hayne had been looking to run infield. But he read the play around him and elected instead to toe the sideline, thus gaining a crucial extra five yards or so.

Hayne is excelling in American football with some classic American football moves, but he’s bringing his Aussie sense of improvisation and all-round ball skills. Because that’s what chaotic Australian sports like rugby league and Australian Rules Football are all about. Having a go. Trusting your gut. In many ways they are the mirror of our national ethos.

Hayne will never again have the free rein to kick, pass, catch, run and tackle like he did in rugby league. We will never again see him do what he did in the video below. But who knows what other tricks are in store?

For the record, the chip kick try in the above video was an incredible moment in which Hayne virtually single-handedly won a pulsating match by himself, thus setting the Eels on a ride from outside the top eight all the way to the 2009 grand final.

This new ride he’s on is no less thrilling. American football commentators are calling it the story of the pre-season, but it’s rapidly turning into the sport story of the year here in Australia.

Long may it continue. And may Hayne’s number 38 jersey be as successful as the number 38 jersey still worn by Mike Pyke, the Sydney Swans ruckman who did the reverse switch from North America to Australia before winning an AFL premiership.

Originally published as Jarryd Hayne is playing American football like an Australian and that’s just one reason why we’re loving his beautiful ride