Why my journey with the Jarryd Hayne dream team is over
Malcolm Knox
Guess I'd better find another dream. My dream was that Jarryd Hayne was to be taken at face value.
My dream was that his dream of playing NFL was a sports play rather than a marketing play. So, ignoring a certain rumbling in the guts, I believed in Hayne's adventure.
I believed him when he responded, on November 21, to the question of whether he was going to quit the NFL:
"If I was going to go back, I wouldn't even come. It's a stupid question… It's foolish, and only fools would believe that… With everything that I've done, I'm not even sure why it's still a question. It's stupid for people to actually believe it."
I wouldn't be a fool. I wouldn't be one of the stupid people.
I kept believing when Hayne's manager Wayne Beavis said: "There's no chance of him coming back, none at all. He is 100 per cent committed to what he is doing over there."
To back himself up, Hayne went on the offensive.
December 18: "I know I've just got to be patient.…. If I've come this far in seven months, give me 12 or 14 and it's going to be completely different."
And a lot of God stuff in there too. Be still, my rumbling stomach.
February 8: "It's funny when you see media outlets say I'm doing this and I'm doing that. It's even funnier when you see Parra fans go online and have a go at me. If you believe that you're a clown."
I would not be a clown. I would not be 'media outlets'. And what would Parra fans know about being deceived? I kept on dreaming.
March 18: "I'm so focused on Plan A, I don't got time for Plan B."
April 13: "That's the media back home. They make stories up. I'm accustomed to that, I know how they operate. But for me, I knew what I was doing, I knew where I was going."
Bloody media. I believed Jarryd. I knew where he was going, too. He had the strong backing of San Francisco 49ers general manager Trent Baalke, who said of Hayne on January 31: "I don't have a crystal ball, but what I do know is that he is very conscientious and [playing in the NFL] is very important to him. We are committed to this. I'm looking forward to getting him back here, I know the coaching staff is."
Now? Now? You could say you feel like taking a shower. You could say you feel like a rube. You might feel a strong fellowship for all the fellow rubes who flocked to social media to support Hayne's dream, to say that they believed he had a future in the NFL, to ride on the Hayne Plane, to draw all the positives from his first season and look forward to his development.
American football is a complicated game. You need years of experience. Truly, if Hayne had got this far in six months, he really could become a respected professional in the NFL, as long as he was committed as he said he was, and his faith was one thing you could never doubt.
Now it's over. When he said "I knew where I was going", nobody realised he meant Suva. You could say – and this seems to be the groupthink of the week – that Hayne saw the writing on the wall, realised he was not going to make it in the NFL, and accepted Fiji's Olympic Sevens offer (oh sorry, not an offer, they "reached out") as a face-saving tactical retreat before his inevitable lucrative working holiday in Japan or Europe and return to the NRL.
But at least he made the NFL, didn't he? Or you could say, the whole thing was a marketing scam to suck in all of us who wanted to believe the best of people.
You could say that, seeing that Hayne was guaranteed a place on the 49ers' practice squad – revealed, after the event, by his American agent Jack Bechta - that he didn't "make it" in the NFL, as such, on level terms.
You could say, to borrow a different Americanism, that Hayne started on third base and thought he'd hit a home run. You could say that Trent Baalke's valedictory statement on Hayne this week – "Jarryd is a tremendous example of what can happen when you commit to a goal and do everything in your power to make it a reality. He earned the right to wear a 49ers uniform and compete alongside the best in the game" – is bullshit as well.
You could say that Hayne's passage into the NFL was soft-soaped by smart marketers and enabled by a bottom-dwelling but wealthy franchise with an eye on growing its international appeal and an experimentalist new coach who guaranteed Hayne a trial, was impressed by his potential, then let him have a chance in a few real games before ending the experiment.
You could say, as Hayne's loyal supporter Jamie Soward said this week, that it's all been worthwhile because Hayne is now a "global brand". Um, that's a good thing? Apple or VW? McDonald's or Merrill Lynch? FIFA? Martha Stewart?
You could say that none of it was real, only show business. You could say that you've been had.
You could say all of that, but you wouldn't have wanted to be among the clowns and fools, would you? The believers of media fabrications. The cynics and haters.
Best not to say any of that, best to keep believing in Jarryd Hayne and this month's lifelong dream. Best not to say anything, because his words speak to, I mean for, themselves.
From Hayne's Telstra-funded documentary, Aussie Hero, American Dream: "For me to give up what I gave up – the status, the leadership, the respect – it's not of this world. The world these days isn't about taking yourself out of the kingdom and putting yourself with the peasants."
You could say a lot of things. But you don't really need to.
http://www.smh.com.au/sport/my-journey-with-the-jarryd-hayne-dream-team-is-over-20160519-gozd52
