You could make a pretty decent argument that the opening game of the San Francisco 49ers 2015 NFL season was the most hyped American football match in Australasian sports history.
Up in the press box at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara that September 14 were at least a dozen Australian sports reporters. Back at home, countless scores tuned into ESPN or followed online.
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With just three minutes left in the first quarter, against the Minnesota Vikings, the man they were all waiting for – ex-Parramatta Eels star Jarryd Hayne – got into the action.
His first touch of the ball? A fumble on a Vikings kick return.
Highlights of ex-NRL star Jarryd Hayne’s regular season debut for the San Francisco 49ers last year. Source: Youtube.
A nation groaned. Here was Hayne – one of the most talented rugby league players of his generation – bumbling about in the neon lights of the NFL after an unrelenting build-up of attention and hype. Not flash.
Riki Ellison was up in the stands in San Jose that day, supporting his son Rhett – a former USC tight end with the Vikings. Ellison was the first New Zealander to play in the NFL, completing ten seasons with both the 49ers and Los Angeles Raiders between 1983 and 1993.
With San Francisco, the Christchurch-born, Tuscon-raised linebacker won three Super Bowls alongside such NFL legends as Joe Montana, Steve Young, Jerry Rice and Ronnie Lott.
Ellison was not surprised with Hayne’s struggles that day, nor with how the ex-Eels wingers fortunes unravelled in the NFL. The ‘Hayne Plane’ pulled the pin on his Niners experiment with just eight games in the bag, and a grand total of 155 receiving, rushing and kick return yards. It had been earnest, but seemed to have little chance in ultimately succeeding.
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Hulking North Queensland Cowboys back rower Jason Taumalolo and Cronulla Sharks fullback Valentine Holmes have followed Hayne’s trajectory recently, nabbing a trial in front of NFL scouts in Los Angeles just over a fortnight ago.
Yet Ellison thinks that outside Aussie Rules kickers becoming punters, the code shift from rugby league or rugby union to the ranks of the NFL isn’t realistic at all.
“The games are very different, except for the kicking maybe,” Ellison told VICE Sports AUNZ from Minneapolis this week, where he was again watching his son Rhett in action.
“The easier transition will always be the punters – there are quite a few Australian punters in the game. The [NFL] is just so skillful. It’s like how skillful the, say, All Blacks are, and how challenging it would be for one of our best NFL players to go over and start on the All Blacks.
“Think through that mindset a little bit, because that’s how difficult it would be for the guys on the best teams in rugby to make that transition [to the NFL] at that level.”
NRL stars Jason Taumalolo and Valentine Holmes had a trial in front of NFL scouts in Los Angeles last month. Source: Youtube.
Of the five Aussies in the NFL this year, three are punters who grew up playing Aussie Rules. Of the other two, Denver Broncos defensive tackle Adam Gostis played four years of college football at Georgia Tech, and Carolina Panthers’ offensive guard David Yankey moved from Australia to the US, aged eight.
Though his early life was built around American football, Ellison’s experience considering the transferable skills in league and rugby offers a perspective unique to both sides of the argument.
Ellison, who now lives in Washington DC and works in the defense industry, lived in New Zealand until he was eight – and grew up under the mythology of his family’s incredible rugby union legacy.
His great great-uncle Thomas Ellison played in the first New Zealand team to tour the United Kingdom in 1888 and 1889 – before captaining the first Kiwi side to tour Australia in 1893.
A future member of the Maori Sports Hall of Fame, Ellison Senior also is understood to be the first person to propose the New Zealand rugby team play in an ‘All Black’ strip, adorned only with a silver fern. Another distant relative – Tamati Ellison – was capped by the All Blacks in 2009.
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When he saw Hayne, Ellison saw the skill – but also the areas he’d always struggle. He feels the same about Taumalolo and Holmes, whom Cronulla team mate Paul Gallen has also said won’t make the NFL cut.
“Even though Jarryd was a great athlete, his running style was not, from my perspective as a middle linebacker, right,” Ellison says.
“He wasn’t a quick accelerator – he was more of a flowing smooth type of runner. In the NFL, you have to have the quick bursts – and he had trouble, I take it, adjusting to that type of mentality on taking the different types of holes.”
Christchurch-born linebacker Riki Ellison played for the San Francisco 49ers between 1983 and 1989, and the Los Angeles Raiders between 1990 and 1992. Photo credit: © RVR Photos-USA TODAY Sports.
Ellison believes the only way for Australians or New Zealanders to make it in the league is to at least play college football first, if not high school ball as well. In addition to Gostis, the experience of Kiwi Paul Lasike to the Chicago Bears this season proves Ellison’s point, too.
The ex-Waikato rugby age group rep went to Brigham Young Unviersity (BYU) in Utah under a rugby scholarship, was picked up by the college’s football team after a coach saw him training – and has gone on to become just the third Kiwi to make the NFL, after Ellison and former Vikings lineman David Dixon.
“My thoughts have always been you have to get into the sport much earlier to be able to understand the nuances and skillsets – because it’s so complex,” he says.
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“It was always be a challenge unless kids get into the game four years earlier, at college or in high school. That’s the best way for them to assimilate into the league.”
Ellison says even if Taumalolo or Holmes got picked up like Hayne did, their chances of lasting much longer would be just as slim. They’d like be mostly consigned to the practice squad, and then they’d be fighting against new recruits from the NFL Draft.
“There’s bigger, better guys coming, every single year,” the Super Bowl winning Kiwi says.
If the current trend of rugby league players giving American football a crack, expect the stream opened up by Hayne to become yearly, too. But Ellison reckons that it will lead back to its source, just as quick as Hayne’s journey was.
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