Jarryd Hayne's NRL exit is the best kind of defection

Three months after Sam Burgess indicated that he would join Sonny Bill Williams in defecting to rugby union at the close of the 2014 season the NRL announced in May that from 1 January, 2015 salary cap laws would be overhauled to allow clubs and the NRL – obliging in the manner of a sugar daddy – to reach further into their pockets to retain star players lured to rugby union, or AFL, by the siren song of open cheque books.

But as Jarryd Hayne showed us on Wednesday, when he surprised the rugby league world by announcing he would be leaving to pursue a desired future in the NFL, it’s not always about the money. If Hayne is to be believed – and there’s no reason not to believe him, given that wherever he ends up training he’ll be, in all likelihood, a modestly paid rookie in a world of athletic savants – his sudden departure from Parramatta and the NRL is all about the challenge and the fulfilment of a dream.

For many older generations in Australia and elsewhere, dreams are things you have when you sleep. Then you wake up and put on your work pants. For Hayne, and those of his generation and younger, however, dreams are things you’re encouraged to chase – oft times despite all good sense. But as someone who should already have financial security after being one of the NRL’s best-paid players for many years, as someone who has more than enough evidence of his athletic capabilities, and as someone who is still young enough to fail and return to the NRL, Hayne can afford to do just that.

It’s probably why the overwhelming feeling that Hayne’s news has generated among fans, and even NRL chief executive Dave Smith, is one of encouragement. A defection to rugby union (let alone AFL) is usually met with variations of “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!”, which is hardly surprising given the history of rugby league and its always fractious relationship with its cousin in corduroy. But American football is something else altogether, and while most observers suggest he doesn’t have the size, speed or American football know-how to make it in the NFL, there’s a sense that rugby league fans will be in his corner as he tries, partly because any success he may have would reflect well on the game they love.

Even Parramatta fans – as evidenced by comments to social media and news sites – are largely behind him, devastated though they may be at the sudden loss of their best player and the hole he leaves at fullback. However, had Hayne announced he was going to rugby union, or, worse, the Canterbury Bulldogs, Parramatta Leagues Club would now be at Defcon 2.

There’s no doubt, however, that Hayne will be a loss to the game, and the NRL will be devastated he’s going, what with his departure compounding the loss of Williams and Burgess, a triumvirate of seat-fillers if there ever was one. Hayne is one of the NRL’s top talents and in full flight he’s a 100kg hummingbird, capable of getting his fill of nectar by directional dramatics, or, if need be, smashing his way to a full belly. Andrew Johns once called him the most complete footballer he’s seen.

Hayne is also highly marketable and his departure comes at the end of a year in which he recaptured his best form after a few seasons where he was like a man wandering the desert in search of treasure he’d buried in more lucid times. It was a renaissance that bore much fruit this year for Parramatta and Laurie Daley’s New South Wales, and Tim Sheens would have been looking forward to his services ahead of the coming Four Nations tournament. Now Brad Arthur, Daley, Sheens and the NRL will be scrambling to deal with his absence.

But we shouldn’t fall into the trap of thinking Hayne – or Williams and Burgess, for that matter – is irreplaceable. History has shown how proficient rugby league has been at producing star players from the red roofed tundra of western Sydney, the back blocks of Brisbane, the suburbs of Auckland, the streets of Yorkshire, and places in between. For instance, we never thought we’d see another Benji Marshall. Until Shaun Johnson came along.

This is not to say the NRL shouldn’t do everything it can to keep the best players in the game, or that if and when our stars leave that their efforts are suddenly tarnished and we should accordingly forget them. It’s merely to point out that we’ve been through this kind of thing before and every time the world keeps spinning.

So it is that the Kangaroos have got on with life. Hours after Hayne’s news hit, Penrith’s rising star Matt Moylan was elevated into the national squad. The circle of life and all that.