And this week’s super-hyped teenager being chased by desperate clubs offering outrageously over-inflated salaries is … drum roll please … Jeremiah Nanai of the North Queensland Cowboys.
After round one it was the Broncos’ Selwyn Cobbo who was tipped to become bigger and better than Greg Inglis and Latrell Mitchell combined, but following two reasonably solid but unspectacular displays, Selwyn has lost his gloss
Boy, anyone would think he was just a 19-year-old kid with only a handful of NRL games behind him.
And speaking of 19-year-old kids with only a handful of NRL games behind them, how good is that Jeremiah Nanai?
Good enough for almost a million dollars a season if the rumour mill is to be believed.
Apparently five clubs have registered an interest in signing the off-contract backrower who scored three tries against the woeful Broncos defence on Sunday afternoon (and that’s not counting the Dolphins who, if you believe
everything you read, are willing to pay anything for anybody who can run the length of a football field without tripping over).
All of those clubs will have one thing in common: if they are willing to spend that sort of money, they are not looking for a youngster that they can nurture and mould. They want someone to lead them to the promised land.
Now it’s hard to feel sorry for a teenager who jogged onto Suncorp Stadium earning around $55,000 a season and floated off 80 minutes later worth over $600,000 a year, but in Nanai’s case we should make an exception