Tearaway learns lesson from Dad

LONG before his boy became rugby league's hottest new property, Manoa Thompson gave son Jarryd Hayne some advice.
"Don't make the same mistakes I did," the former South Sydney journeyman said.

"Football's a great life but if you abuse it, it will come back and bite you hard."

It's the fatherly mantra credited for lifting Hayne, 18, to rarified heights in his rookie season at Parramatta. Up against Andrew Johns and making only his seventh first grade appearance, Hayne declared his untold potential with four tries in 29 minutes last Saturday night. He scored a double the previous week and carries the ball like it belongs in his kit bag. However, if not for lessons from dad's turbulent career, Hayne's stunning take-off might never have occurred.

Speaking for the first time about his son, Thompson said:

"I'm always into him about his training. That's why I dropped out at the end - I cut too many corners."

Thompson debuted for the Rabbitohs in 1989, the year after Hayne was born. Thirteen seasons later the three-quarter retired after stints with more than half a dozen clubs in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and France.

"When I came back from France in 2002 I had to get a job but had no qualifications aside from football," Thompson said.

"The only option was picking and packing for Woolworths at Flemington Markets.

"That was a big wake-up call. It nearly killed me. After spending a year there it made me think, 'I don't want my boy going through this'."

But Hayne, then playing junior park football and living with his mother in the south-western Sydney suburb of Minto, appeared destined for little more.

"He was at that age where he was rebelling a bit with his mum," Thompson recalled.

"You hear stories out at Minto. Unemployment, single parents - it was not an ideal environment."

Determined to split Hayne's destiny from his own, Thompson summoned player-manager Wayne Beavis to arrange enrolment at Westfields Sports High.

"We had to pull a few strings because his grades weren't that great, but he got in," Thompson said. "It was very, very lucky. I think we were blessed."

From then the light illuminating Hayne's bright future started to shine.

"It was a pretty big thing," Hayne said yesterday.

"If I look at it now, I was just mucking around and going to parties and that."

Thompson, who has since started his own wholesale food delivery business, is still driving home important messages to his son.

The Daily Telegraph