You have heard of this, I know you have. It is all over the news and it should be. It is a remarkable thing, even for someone so talented. A change of codes is no cakewalk, even from the obscurely similar rugby league to rugby union, or vice-versa. But from rugby league to yankee football- while not unheard of, pretty unlikely in this day and age and given the levels that sport across the board is at. Where no longer is the plumber or the baker playing full-back.
My objection, which you all knew I had one, is with the term the press have coined to cover this remarkable story. Thats it, you got it, the ‘Hayne Plane’. It could be just me, though I doubt it, but I don’t get it.
It is illogical, nonsensical and, really, ‘Plane Dumb’.
A Successful Athlete, A Failure of a Media Experiment.
I can only assume the press got tired of using the ‘train’ rhyme with things that do rhyme and resemble that trajectory. In this case though, it is far more sensible. The path Hayne has taken is much more that of the locomotive than the jetliner. He has pushed forward, ever forward, strong, tough, relentless and overcoming things.
A plane, by contrast, and not a powerless machine does not invoke the same imagery. It loops around when a spot on the tarmac is not readily available, it dodges turbulence, it dips and dodges, rises and falls and if you have ever been on one, you know they bullshit you with taxiing and seat-belt signs. A train is slower, sure, but it is more direct.
We all know it is built on the bedrock of the rhyme with the surname. Though I suppose I will now give a couple reasons why I think they chose this title and counter it with why it is stupid. Because hey, it’s what I do.
He Is Flying High.
The ‘plane’ image is one that is skipping across gods bearded face. He is up there, way up there, as up there as a plane. And, don’t miss this, his last name is also Hayne. What brilliant luck. I do wonder. If his name was, say, ‘Jaryd Climp’ would he be the ‘Climp Blimp’- evoking images of a gently floating overweight guy who stumbles upon his dream of a reasonably priced fish and chip shop.
He Is Overseas.
As we know a train cannot reasonably traverse the ocean, at least not in time to turn into a tight 75 kilo running back. As such the ‘Hayne Plane’ has kept in plain sight the fact that the man is overseas. You take a plane to get overseas, right? That’s where he is, Jarryd! If he had gone to play for an city or eastern suburbs side, would he then be the ‘Hayne shitty green Western Line rattler’, probably not.
I suggest, despite all the points of logic I have raised, there is one severe and significant reason to abandon this moniker for a genuinely remarkable story.
It Is Naturally Hobbled By The Tongue.
We, as a species, are now too dumb or complacent to accept a rhyme headline that alters from the obvious. ‘Hayne Plane’, just sounds weird. It doesn't sit well in the mouth, it jumps back off the tongue and is not at all digestible to the ears. It is spell-check telling you the real spelling even though it discomforts you, it is the friend missing both eyebrows when you could have sworn he just had a haircut and it is the homicidal silence over a large household when the youngest son is on a sleepover.
Basically it is Uncanny in the intellectual sense. Jentsch described the concept as “something one does not know one’s way about in”. In a, perhaps aesthetic sense, this is true of the ‘Hayne Plane’. It is being disoriented. Linguistically there is nothing more disorienting, or uncomfortable, than trying to say as an adult; ‘I have been following the Hayne Plane’.
NP.
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