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The Hayne effect.

Messages
517
If he does well it is something I can sell to football coaches on why League is better for them to play in the Spring than Run Track. To date there have been many high school or college double sport athletes who played union that made it in the NFL but the most famous one from my research is Nagta the D-Line player from the Ravens, the Patriots have Nate Ebner who is on special teams coverage unit. If he gets time and does damage, then it will be beneficial. If he makes people money in fantasy football then its even more useful, however it will only IMO be useful to sell to coaches on letting or forcing their players to play league in the Spring. Hayne really doesnt talk about the NRL or the Sport nor are the reports at this stage interested in it, so it will be harder for a fan just watching him speak or a highlight on sportscenter be introduced to League style rugby. Right now I see it as an opportunity to point to for those trying to grow the game. [ and as you may think... the pitch is wanna be a better football player... come play league]

but again it is useful because he is something we can point to to say hey... know that guy hayne for the 49ers.. he played our sport.... he made it in the NFL cause our sport is pretty much the same.. so come watch a league game... its easy to understand and totally different from that Union rugby thing you saw on NBC sports an really different from that 7s thing you saw on NBC.

There needs to be some combination of his success with the playing of the NRL and Superleague on a channel with a lot more popularity than Fox Soccer Plus... (most impossible channel to get for most people).
 
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Joker's Wild

Coach
Messages
17,894
Id like to here Homers thoughts on this...

Glass-of-water.jpg
 

alien

Referee
Messages
20,279
You're sulking again because the NRL is front and centre of the rugby league world, as it always is, and as you always do.

We're talking about a NFL player on the North American RL subforum, what does this remotely have to do with the NRL? :lol:

if i had to guess, i would say because hayne is from the nrl, so they will often talk about the comp he is from, show video footage from nrl games, etc.
 

Fatwing15

Juniors
Messages
262
Need to be careful union don't piggy back off " the hayne plane" effect


Listening to triple m over night i heard a fox sports advert for the union world cup that used a yank announcer using NFL terms to describe rugby union....this is a very blatant reference to hayne & the 49ers in my opinion..

All america knows is hayne played rugby...and is a rugby star...americans,in general, don't know theres 2 coded..and the union mob know it

Yea, this is going to be a strange result of the Hayne Effect. I've seen more air time interviewing rugby union coaches than anything specifically about rugby league, the NRL or ANYTHING related to league in the U.S.
 
Messages
2,364
People talking about Hayne are not talking about RL, any more than people talking about Lawrence Okoye are talking about discus. Do you think discus throwing is going to get a huge boost off the back of Okoye being signed to the Cardinals? No, it's stupid to even suggest. Obviously Okoye isn't as big a name as Hayne was/is, but the same principle applies. Hayne generates discussion because he is a curiosity and is doing something that has never been done before. That doesn't mean people have any interest or attachment to the sport he was playing before he joined the NFL. See my earlier analogy, if a top lacrosse player signed to a NRL team nobody would be talking about lacrosse, nobody would be investing in lacrosse or looking to help the sport of lacrosse, it's insignificant apart from being a curiosity. The fact that more people in America now know what RL is shouldn't be a surprise considering virtually nobody knew what it was before, and certainly had never had any reason to talk about it before.

I take a few of your points but I disagree that it's meaningless or that its effects are negligible. If you can demonstrate even a curiosity in the game, and search engine and social media metrics provide that whether you think they're meaningful or not, then it puts you in a better position to argue the corner/potential of your product. Individuals and organisations pay hundreds of thousands, probably millions, to get the exposure we're starting to see online.

Beyond that I just don't buy that said curiosity can't be built on and utilised to grow the game, whether from a broadcasting perspective or a grass roots development perspective. I know Americans, 49ers fans particularly, who are now giving the sport a go (as viewers, and whether they stick with it who knows) on the strength of hearing about Hayne and seeing league fans commenting on his transition.

By the end of this endeavor there could likely be millions of Americans who know what rugby league is, even if vaguely, who didn't have the slightest before. It's not unrealistic at all to think league in the States could have thousands of new fans, hundreds of new players, drag those figures upwards depending on how Hayne goes in regular season games. That can only be good for the game, even if it's a hypothetical at this stage. Even if it isn't capitalised on as best it could, it can still only be good for the game stateside. Even if it's not a big US-based league, it's still good for the game. It's better than before. It's progress, small but progress all the same. We've made a step forward, debate the size of the step all you want, I think that's unquestionable.

You talk about fantasy and people having OTT expectations but as far as I can see you're the only one saying that huge changes would be satisfactory and everything else should be tempered or isn't worth talking. Most people are saying this will be good for the profile of the game, rugby league could grow in the United States from this... fairly reasonable positions/assertions if not a little optimistic. Whereas your position seems to be that everyone should shut the f**k up and be pessimistic unless the NFL come out and create their own off-season rugby league and only then can we act like something has been achieved by the move.

You don't like the ridiculous Facebook experts who think rugby league is going to be huge in the States on the strength of Jarryd Hayne, that's fair enough because it's obvious you've cared and thought long and hard about growing the sport in regions like the US - probably supported growth meaningfully in ways me and others haven't when most people cared nothing - but by getting so worked up at the naivety and being so dismissive of the upside you come across as the other side of extreme. They're insisting the glass is filled to the brim, you're adamant there isn't a lick of water in there.

And we both know internationalism is your shtick and you don't like NRL-minded league fans, no need to be coy about that. I reckon you'd be singing from the roof tops if the RLWC or some international aspect of the sport sparked as much interest in league in the States as Jarryd Hayne has done, you'd be all over social media and search engine analytics like a rash.
 
Messages
2,364
Yea, this is going to be a strange result of the Hayne Effect. I've seen more air time interviewing rugby union coaches than anything specifically about rugby league, the NRL or ANYTHING related to league in the U.S.

Weird, that. If Hayne doesn't represent real growth potential, as some would tell it, why the f**k are union all over deceiving people and claiming him? :lol:
 

Evil Homer

Moderator
Staff member
Messages
7,178
I take a few of your points but I disagree that it's meaningless or that its effects are negligible. If you can demonstrate even a curiosity in the game, and search engine and social media metrics provide that whether you think they're meaningful or not, then it puts you in a better position to argue the corner/potential of your product. Individuals and organisations pay hundreds of thousands, probably millions, to get the exposure we're starting to see online.

Beyond that I just don't buy that said curiosity can't be built on and utilised to grow the game, whether from a broadcasting perspective or a grass roots development perspective. I know Americans, 49ers fans particularly, who are now giving the sport a go (as viewers, and whether they stick with it who knows) on the strength of hearing about Hayne and seeing league fans commenting on his transition.

By the end of this endeavor there could likely be millions of Americans who know what rugby league is, even if vaguely, who didn't have the slightest before. It's not unrealistic at all to think league in the States could have thousands of new fans, hundreds of new players, drag those figures upwards depending on how Hayne goes in regular season games. That can only be good for the game, even if it's a hypothetical at this stage. Even if it isn't capitalised on as best it could, it can still only be good for the game stateside. Even if it's not a big US-based league, it's still good for the game. It's better than before. It's progress, small but progress all the same. We've made a step forward, debate the size of the step all you want, I think that's unquestionable.

You talk about fantasy and people having OTT expectations but as far as I can see you're the only one saying that huge changes would be satisfactory and everything else should be tempered or isn't worth talking. Most people are saying this will be good for the profile of the game, rugby league could grow in the United States from this... fairly reasonable positions/assertions if not a little optimistic. Whereas your position seems to be that everyone should shut the f**k up and be pessimistic unless the NFL come out and create their own off-season rugby league and only then can we act like something has been achieved by the move.

You don't like the ridiculous Facebook experts who think rugby league is going to be huge in the States on the strength of Jarryd Hayne, that's fair enough because it's obvious you've cared and thought long and hard about growing the sport in regions like the US - probably supported growth meaningfully in ways me and others haven't when most people cared nothing - but by getting so worked up at the naivety and being so dismissive of the upside you come across as the other side of extreme. They're insisting the glass is filled to the brim, you're adamant there isn't a lick of water in there.
Look, I'm not saying potentially increased exposure is a bad thing, it never can be. As I said, Americans knowing about RL is clearly better than them not knowing about it. What I'm saying is that the potential for any sort of realistic growth off the back of this is slim to none. Americans may Google RL or look it up on Youtube but is that going to increase playing numbers, lead to more coverage in the US, is it actually going to make any difference to anything? Hypothetically more people may have heard of RL and that's great, but if there's nothing tangible coming out of it then it really isn't worth discussing.

Apart from anything else, this story is almost entirely typical Aussie sensationalism. Hayne generated some curiosity but he's not some sort of megastar in the US, he hasn't even played a NFL match yet and will likely be a special teams player. Guys like Tim Tebow also generate a ton of media coverage in the preseason, if the NRL really want a boost in the US/NFL market then maybe they should sign him, the crossover appeal would probably be 50x that of Hayne and these people would actually be watching RL as opposed to just hearing a brief mention of it on TV. And that would be something proactive that we would be doing as a sport, rather than losing a top player and then trying to make out that it's a good thing that he didn't want to play RL any more.
And we both know internationalism is your shtick and you don't like NRL-minded league fans, no need to be coy about that. I reckon you'd be singing from the roof tops if the RLWC or some international aspect of the sport sparked as much interest in league in the States as Jarryd Hayne has done, you'd be all over social media and search engine analytics like a rash.
Of course. Because that would be something that the sport would have achieved, rather than trying to find some benefit from a player who has left for reasons completely beyond our control. This isn't growth or a 'step forward' that RL has made, it's an isolated, one-off occurrence which TBH is driven by the fact that RL currently isn't big enough to provide top players with the exposure/financial incentives that they deserve. I can't think of another professional sport that is constantly in danger of losing its top performers, and unless the sport can grow beyond its current profile and earning potential then it's going to continue to happen. And yes, the way to do that is international growth because the markets that we do have currently just can't reach that level by themselves as solely domestic products. If the profiles of the Rugby World Cup and the RLWC were reversed do you think the likes of SBW and Burgess would currently be playing union? That's the reason I pedal international RL so much and why I'm so critical of the NRL for being so blind to it.
 
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MR KNIGHT

Juniors
Messages
133
The big winner is the NFL in Australia.

On a grass roots level it is great propaganda for RL teams to promote the game to RU players in the States and use him as an example.

Other than that, every body take a deep breath, calm down and enjoy it! Especially you Homer. I know no one understands your pain of being in the States all alone promoting Rugby League!
 

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