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Oh, Jarryd.
What’s doing, you interesting, compelling, odd, funny, zealot-eyed, flip-flappin’ footy man, you? Hm?
Answer me!
Or don’t, it is of no import.
But know this; since you brushed the Parramatta Eels, then brushed the San Francisco 49ers, and then brushed the Parramatta Eels again for the bright lights (cough, money) of the Gold Coast, it’s clear what matters most to you, Jarryd Hayne, is you, Jarryd Hayne.
Not the footy club, not the fans, not the dear sweet National Rugby League.
Not the jealous, yapping, narking nuff-nuffs, not the sweary-bear trolls of the Twittersphere, for those people are but shouty mice.
And certainly not we, jackals of the fourth estate, who so often critique your motives and movements given you are to selling ad space upon media as Pauline Hanson is to stoking division and racism, the bung-eyed dingbat, her time will come in so many flaming lakes of fire.
Anyway. Clearly what matters to you, Hayne Plane or Train is you, Hayne Plane or Train. Yours is the only opinion that counts.
Just as an aside, what is it – Train or Plane? How about we go with a train if you’re hot-pronking through the meat of so many chunky D-lines and bolting down the guts, then a Plane when you’ve scored a try and are spreading your wings like a great golden condor sailing above the Andes, riding the hot up-drafts off the Peruvian ranges.
Regardless! Everyone else, all we punters, pundits and piss-ants, we can all take a flying nude leap at the moon, much as any of our opinion matters, which is to say not a jot.
But you would suggest Mal Meninga’s opinion matters, a bit.
And Mal Meninga says you’d be letting down Gold Coast Titans by brushing them, given how much money they’ve given you, and taken from Gold Coast people, and all the promotional stuff and merchandising they’ve staked upon your appearances at Robina.
And so on.
“Honestly, I think he’s let the Titans down,” said Meninga, coach of Australia.
“He hasn’t played well enough to do that. I think he needs to make sure that he stays at the club and plays the best he possibly can for them.
“They’re the ones who invested in him and he hasn’t invested back in the club.”
My tip, Jarryd Hayne? You don’t give a stuff about Gold Coast Titans, an owner-less operation you’d see as another franchise out to use you, your image and hot footy skill to sell season tickets and fill empty blue seats at CBUS Super Stadium up there on the oddly ambivalent Gold Coast.
You wouldn’t care for their balance sheet of the Titans franchise, not one jot.
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Your child? Your little girl? Brother, of course, your entire life, and you will, of course, do what you believe is right for that little life forever.
But there are planes, Plane. Flight takes an hour, OOL-SYD, and you can sit up the pointy end and tweet all the way. Logistical issues you can work. Homesickness is curable.
You’d be playing in Sydney a couple times a month, also. And you could have two homes given you earn $1.blah-blah million each year, which is a lot.
And don’t tell us it’s another freakin’ “dream” to return to Parramatta. You had the chance, pal. You can’t have another dream, not the now, anyway.
You’ve signed on, committed. That should mean something. Man’s mark is his bond, all that?
And do not even begin to begin me on the Fiji Sevens Olympic dream thing.
As one Australian rugby sevens man told me about the chances of you turning up out of American football to play for the world champion and ultimate gold-medal-winning Fijian Sevens team; “It’s a dream, alright. He’s dreamin’.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Dream big, act it out. Go for your freakin’ life, buddy-roo.
For did we not all hum along on your bandwagon in those first nascent steps into NFL super-stardom?
Watching you bop about on the magic carpet of Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, that was so cool, like one of our own, a league man, was ripping off league moves in America’s favourite sport, and killing ‘em.
I know I did. I wrote some ridiculous gibber for the Guardian, a play-by-play blog thing, and was internet-famous for a week or so, interviewed on ESPN, Sports Illustrated and a whole host of WKRPs in Cincinnati.
I was mentioned on this talking heads show, Around The Horn, by thick-necked funny men who thought the term “grassed it” to describe you dropping the ball was the height of good humour.
Jarryd Hayne’s tenure in the NFL was short-lived. (Photo: AP)
A few weeks later I was shouted a week in San Francisco by the good tax-payers California. I played golf and drank craft beer in a parking lot, and watched you drop the ball again against Baltimore Ravens at Levi’s Stadium, and thus play rarely again, if at all.
Tough show business that National Football League, and while Jim Tomsula was all for ‘project players’ such as yourself early on, his first lookout was for Jim Tomsula, and putting Ws in the column read by his billionaire big bosses.
But you didn’t play much and the 49ers didn’t win much, and out the door dear Jim Tomsula went.
Soon enough you felt the new guy wouldn’t be giving you a whole lot of love or game time, and the Olympics was coming up in Brazil, so what the hey! You’d never been to Brazil and the Fijian Sevens team were going there and favourites to win gold.
You thought you’d head off to London to see about visiting Brazil with the Fijian Sevens team, favourites for gold.
And here we are, bagging you out, dear old Hayne Plane-Train, the most peripatetic sports-hound since Sonny Bill Williams.
And now it is written that you’re denying reports you want to move on. But the bloke who wrote the yarn got it from the Titans who got it from your manager.
And here we are, again.
Jarryd Hayne?
Go well.
Stay at Robina.