I still think of Kenny as a more complete footballer than Hayne. I will do until Hayne develops to such a point as to surpass him. To me that means having a "football brain" - not just an attacking one.
By "football brain" do you just mean 'experience'? I'm sure his positional play at fullback will improve the more he's exposed to the diverse situations fullbacks face throughout a match/season/career.
But as far as anticipation and vision, he's already exceptional, and he might
never be up there with Kenny (who wasn't as good as Sterling, for example).
But does he have to be, to be as good as Kenny? Hayne's already faster and stronger than him - in large part due to modern training and nutrition, but also due to having a lot of Melanesian fast-twitch muscle fibres from his dad (I'm making an assumption here - maybe his mum was a beast on the netball court back in the day). He's also already got freakish vision. Does he have to be better than Kenny at
every facet of the game to be as good as him in general?
Shouldn't we just look at overall impact on a game, or throughout a season? Hayne dominates already. The fact that Kenny played in a better team than Hayne could be a pro or a con when trying to compare the two players, especially when looking at Kenny's grand final record.
Hayne's good, and he's getting better with a long career ahead of him.
I think my question is valid - how much better does he need to get? Does he need to get any better at all? What if he
only keeps dominating like he does now?
I remember Kenny at the end of his career and he was pretty average (though in an absolutely woeful team) though I do remember one game we won against Norths (one of our handful of grand final wins every year back then) where Bert outplayed Australian five-eighth Peter Jackson, but the Bears were pretty bad that day.
It's a given that Hayne will also slow down and lose some power at about 30 which will hamper his game, and with the salary cap there'll never again be a team as bad as the Eels of the early-mid 90's. How would we even be able to compare the two at the end of their careers?
Kenny played for Australia and NSW between the ages of 21-26. That's a bit young to retire from rep footy. When was he at his peak? Hayne was playing for NSW and Australia at 19. He could be washed up by 26 but that would still give him 2 more years of rep footy than Kenny, and it's likely he'll still be playing rep footy into his late 20's just going on averages.
That's the main thing, not dumping premature accolades on him like Hagan has done.
It's natural, as we get older, to resent younger blokes getting anything without having to 'wait their turn' - I hate the fact that my 18 year old brother is already a better footy player than I ever was - but how premature are the accolades Hayne is getting? He's the best player in the NRL. If he retires tomorrow he always will have been one of them. There's only a couple of current players you can say that about (Thurston, Lockyer, arguably some others).
On current form, who's ever been better?
