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Jarryd Hayne’s opening twenty minutes against the Bulldogs on Friday night was some of the most scintillating rugby league that you could ever hope to see. The tackle busts, steps and raw acceleration for his first try.
The long ball and support play for his second. The balance and ability to draw defenders before throwing the cut out pass for Krisnan Inu’s first try were all top shelf – and all within ten minutes of kick off!
Unfortunately, Channel 9’s commentary team lost the plot and started to assign Midas like qualities to everything that Hayne did from that point on – the good, the bad and the ugly.
It started when Hayne went on a 40 metre crab-like run across field before flinging a wild flick pass above and behind Inu and directly into touch. Wow! said the commentators, nobody can do what Hayne can do on a footy field, he’s amazing, brilliant, etc, etc.
One can only imagine the caning that a Daniel Mortimer or Jeff Robson would have copped if they’d done the same.
Later in the game Hayne was involved in a backline move where he received the ball and immediately passed to Joel Reddy, who drew the opposing winger and put Inu in for his second try.
Again the commentators reached for the superlatives with Gus telling us it was a mark of genius for a ball player like Hayne to realise that he could sometimes pass to a team mate and let him set up the try rather than throwing the cut out pass himself.
Puh-lease … what Hayne did he did well, but it was a simple catch and pass and most competent park footballers could do exactly the same thing.
It reached a crescendo when Hayne pulled off his brilliant cover tackle on David Stagg. Rabs went into hyperbolic overdrive: How many times is he going to do that in one game? How many tries is he going to save?
Ummm, Rabs, Hayne hadn’t actually saved any tries up to that point. He was involved in the earlier attempt to hold Andrew Ryan up over the line but Ryan got the ball down before Hayne could get underneath and roll him over.
Around the half hour mark we were told that Hayne was Johns, Lockyer, Fittler, Daley and Wally Lewis all rolled into one!
Really?
Hayne is yet to take win a Test match by the scruff of the neck (albeit that to date he’s only been selected as a winger) and while he has a couple of amazing moments on his Origin highlights reel he’s yet to dominate an Origin game let alone a series.
While I kept the volume on, I know a few people who turned it down at this stage, having had enough of the whole planes, trains and automobiles commentary cavalcade.
When he’s on Hayne is an incredible player who performs amazing feats on the field. It should be remembered (and remarked) that he’s still only 22 and still learning the game (and his own game), most notably the key to consistency which has eluded plenty of potentially great players in the past.
To date, he’s had a great run of eight or nine games at the back end of 2009, culminating in a disappointing Grand Final performance and has now strung together three great games in a row this season.
I hope Hayne does turn his current form into a run like ’09 because it added an exciting dimension into the run in to the semis and heaven knows the competition this year needs a team and a player to stand up and grab the headlines.
I also hope that in ten years time we’re all talking about what a fantastic career Hayne has had. However, in the meantime, let’s just tone down some of the overblown commentary around everything that he does.
It’s almost like commentators and journalists want to make the grand statements so that in a few years time they can reflect on their own eye for talent: “I always said that Hayne would be better than Lockyer.”
And if he doesn’t live up to the hype – well there’s a story in itself.
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