Jarryd Hayne isn't your average 'Australian done good' in the US
Matt Cleary
Sunday 6 September 2015 16.30 EDT
Jarryd Hayne, the man who could burn about the rugby league field hot-pronking like a hairy goat on fire. Photograph: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
The new San Francisco 49ers NFL player is a pioneer but the fascination with him isn’t just down to him being an Australian succeeding in the States
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Here’s our Hayne Plane, the Minto Kid, a “Westie”, a battler who grew up in a housing commission and bought his mum a house. And by extension he is rugby league. And he’s killing it in America. America! Rugby league struggles for relevance in Melbourne. Yet a rugby league player is rostered onto the 53-man list of American footballers who’ll represent San Francisco 49ers.
Here’s a thing about rugby league: the game is actually quite insecure. Rugby league people insist, in all seriousness, that rugby league is the greatest game of all, that it’s superior to all other games. Yet rugby league in the grand schema of global sport is ranked near badminton and tug-of-war. And rugby league knows it, doesn’t understand why (it’s the greatest game of all, after all) and sort of resents it. It’s one reason rugby league hates Americans calling Hayne a “rugby” player. Because “rugby” denotes “union”. And rugby league doesn’t like “union”.
How about Hayne though? In rugby league he was one the best and funkiest freestyle players there’s ever been, a man who could burn about the field hot-pronking like a hairy goat on fire. Check him out, those feet, the unpredictable lateral movement. And that fend! What a ripper. Like a cattle prod. Zap! Yow! Go away, man-beast, for I wish to continue running in this and several other directions, quite fast. And from that base of rugby league and tooling about with his mates in Minto he’s become a running gun in American football. And that’s never been done.
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