Hayne to join Daley and Johns, but is he a Blues great?
Laurie Daley wore a T-shirt around the Blues’ luxurious far north coast resort on Monday that said nothing on the front but ‘‘no excuses’’. Time’s almost up for talking, of which there has been very little anyway in this new-age sanitised State of Origin arena.
But for the lack of verbal volleys being traded either side of the Tweed, there is one discussion worth having: just how much is at stake for Daley’s great enigma, Jarryd Hayne, in the Origin decider? Perhaps more than the coach himself, whose very future beyond Wednesday night is Kingscliff’s taboo topic?
Hayne is not the type to rifle through record books or mull milestones. He’d prefer to thumb his way to another PlayStation success than thumb his way through the Origin annals.
But on a night when he will join his coach Daley and Immortal Andrew Johns on 23 caps for his state – and potentially could have had many more if not for an NFL sabbatical – has a NSW legacy ever had more riding on it than the result of a single match?
Statistically, joining Daley and Johns in the rarefied air should be cause for celebration alone. Had he not flirted with – and cracked – an NFL career, he could have been on the cusp of chasing down Brad Fittler (31) on the Blues legends’ list.
But should Hayne even be in the conversation with three of NSW greats?
Given he only needs one fourpointer to eclipse Michael O’Connor as the Blues’ greatest try-scorer – and could rack up the enviable feat of scoring in three successive games should he touch down at Suncorp Stadium, something he hasn’t managed in his Origin career to date – it is probably reason enough to suggest he should.
Some will also argue Father Time and Lady Luck have played a part, but perhaps it’s no coincidence NSW haven’t really looked like winning an Origin series until this year after Hayne stood to attention atop Blatchy’s Blues in 2014. He came back and NSW suddenly seemed back.
They had swagger again. A man they knew capable of blowing a game open at a moment’s notice. One the opposition genuinely didn’t know what he would produce. Some of Hayne’s team-mates probably know exactly how Queensland feel. Just fit him in somewhere. Anywhere.
All of that doesn’t necessarily cement a legacy, though.
Hayne needs to win arguably as much as Mitchell Pearce. He will always be remembered as a great athlete, but that doesn’t make him a NSW great. Not yet.
Daley and Johns won more than they lost in sky blue. The majority of Hayne’s Origin career has been a victim of Queensland’s golden generation, but this year is an exception.
He simply has to win a series for a team whose players look up to him and which resembles nothing like the one he used to look up to.
‘‘I’m not getting any younger and it’s something [during] the first camp [I realised] with the age of the players,’’ Hayne said last month of the Origin differences from 2014. ‘‘I think I’m the second oldest. I’m definitely getting older.’’
Which means time to be a NSW great, as well as excuses, are running out.