Rugby league might want Jarryd Hayne but the game doesn’t need him, writes Paul Malone
PAUL MALONE, The Courier-Mail
July 28, 2016 8:53pm
WHILE rugby league might desperately want Jarryd Hayne back, it does not need him.
While many in Sydney, to steal Paul Simon’s old line about Joe DiMaggio, are turning their lonely eyes towards Hayne, many of the rest of us couldn’t give a “woo hoo hoo’’.
Rugby league, the third most recent code of football Hayne has played, has plugged along OK, thanks very much, while the former Eels and NSW star had been playing NFL and Sevens rugby.
The NRL TV audience is up 18 per cent, factoring in Fox Sports, and Game One of this year’s Origin series drew a record audience, peaking at 4.42 million.
By Game Three, the Sydney audience was down more than 200,000 in that market, which went towards a theory you hear in Sydney that people are getting bored with Origin.
Last year, Origin had a record crowd at the MCG (91,513) and the NRL had its highest total attendance for a finals series with 353,087, when the Broncos were up and firing with two home finals.
Going into the weekend’s round, the 2016 premiership’s average attendance was 15,300, up from the year-end home-and-away average of 15,074.
Sydney fans would no doubt love to see Hayne play in the NRL rather than rugby at the NSW Waratahs.
Most of us would tune in to watch his first NRL match back and many of us would make a point of watching his fourth.
But his 10th NRL match back? It's just another game on television.
Another aspect of a Hayne return to the NRL would be how long he would be cooling his heels.
How long would it be before Japanese or French rugby union took his fancy?
Say what you like about Sonny Bill Williams but when he picked a club after his flight to French rugby, he committed to that team for a worthwhile amount of time.
If Hayne does step back from an NRL return, we’ll still have young, emerging stars like Suliasi Vunivalu, Valentine Holmes and Corey Oates — all at or near the lead of try-scoring lists.