The Hayne Plane chronicles: Episode 482

The Jarryd Hayne thing? Dunno. And chances are you dunno, either.

We do know is this: Hayne is innocent. Indeed he’s been proven innocent. A complaint was taken to police in May of 2016 about an alleged incident in December 2015, and no charge was brought against Hayne by the police representing the state of California.

You’re innocent until proven guilty. Thus: Hayne is innocent.

Now, however, Hayne is effectively being sued by a woman in a ‘civil suit’ which is a thing they do in America in which people can sue people for alleged wrong-doing even though the criminal justice system may have thrown out a case.

The police investigation into the Hayne case became his word against the woman’s that their sex was consensual. Police didn’t dig up enough evidence to charge him. And that was it.

And that’s where it would’ve stayed in countries other than America which has a thing in which people can still sue people even after the court, the state, declares that a person is not guilty of a thing.

In Hayne’s case, he’s being sued for “sexual battery, battery, gender violence, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligence,” according to documents tendered by lawyers.

The young woman is alleged to have woken alone, naked, under a sheet beside a pool of blood.

Court documents say she was a virgin who suffered significant physical and emotional trauma.

Hayne’s lawyer declared: “Mr Hayne unequivocally and vehemently denies the allegations, which are the subject of the civil complaint.”

Hayne has not yet been served with any proceedings or formal complaint relating to the incident.

(AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

How Hayne’s accusers will go about proving these things when police and the court system could not, I dunno.

And you would think that if they do, and something that serious is proven, that the person goes to jail. Because the person would be proven guilty of the thing.

But not in America. There seems to be different sorts of guilty. A civil case is different from a criminal case.

The family of Nicole Simpson and her boyfriend Ron Goldman successfully sued OJ Simpson after he was not convicted, in a criminal case, of their murder because a pair of bloody gloves didn’t fit and Johnny Cochrane convinced enough people on a jury that the prosecuting detective, Mark Fuhrman, was racist and may have planted the bloody gloves.

How that got The Juice off the murder wrap given bloody gloves, bloody-soled shoes, incidents of wife-beating, and an unknown person in a sweatshirt near the scene of the crime, is one of those Only In America things.

Anyway, OJ was proven not guilty, somehow, so the families of Nicole and Ron sued OJ and OJ was ordered by another judge to pay $US33.5 million.

So he wasn’t ‘guilty’ of the double murder in one court, but he still had to pay a fine for it by order of another.

Riddle me that, America.

It’s into this wacky action that it seems our Hayne Plane – and his Parramatta Eels and our dear sweet National Rugby League with him – is headed.

And here we are and he we’ll likely stay, glued to Jarryd ‘Hayne Plane and/or Train’ Hayne, as America was to OJ and his ‘trial of the century’ in 1995.

Maybe not that glued; hard to see Hayne leading dozens of NSW Police in a low-speed pursuit down the M4 to Parramatta.

But it’s still going to be a good long shit-storm of publicity that the Eels would not have signed up for when they signed the man on.

For surely – surely? – the suits at Parramatta would’ve had no inkling that this level of negative publicity would descend upon on their club, their blue-and-gold brand, with the signing of Hayne.

You don’t plan for this. Well, they do and they don’t. The NRL and clubs have top people trained in crisis management, who’ll declare that: “The police in the United States did not proceed with any criminal proceedings but we will review the information available and continue to monitor the civil case.”

The NRL’s PR people are best practice because they’ve had plenty of practice. The Parramatta Eels have had more experience fending off bouncers than the Pommy tail-enders.

And thus they signed old mate Hayne Plane because he’s a cracker of a footy player capable of wondrous deeds, and he makes those turnstiles sing, as Wendell Sailor was fond of saying of himself.

And signing the prodigal son was a good news yarn for a club that’s had scant enough of them in recent times.

(AAP Image/Dan Peled)

And they got him for unders.

But mainly because he’s a superstar player. Get Hayne fit and firing and giving a rat’s, you can win a comp.

But thinking there wasn’t the potential for dud, soap opera-like headlines for the club and the brand and ‘the game’, and all that, with the signing of Hayne would be beyond naïve.

Hayne’s got more form than Winx. Hayne courts more headlines than Malcolm Turnbull.

Which is not his fault, unless it, you know, is. Hayne talks a bit of rubbish, on occasion. And makes what some would consider odd choices. And believes some media is out to get him. And travels to Jerusalem to get baptised, and puts it up for public consumption on the Instagram.

And so on.

All this makes him compelling viewing. And if people are compelled to view you, and thus consume media in which you appear, then the media will report the things you do, on and off the pitch, as Russell Crowe – photographed in a flannie shirt while buying a hot chicken in an Oxford Street chicken shop – would tell you.

And if Eels suits thought otherwise then the Eels need new suits.

And here we are: glued to Episode 482 of The Hayne Plane Chronicles, another juicy episode in the roller-coaster ride of this most compelling of sports people.

He’s no Juice. But he’s tasty all the same.