This was in stark contrast to my footy-mad father and brothers. Football took over our house all weekend, every weekend - the playing, the watching, the re-staging every move, from their own games and from the televised ones. Married life offered the sweet promise of a football-free zone. Ripped off: since joining a footy tipping competition several years ago, my husband has become hooked. Worse and worse, football weekends are reaching back into Thursdays, thanks to some very unwelcome programming by the NRL marketeers.

It's now or never: Jarryd Hayne will be hoping for a chance to shine against the Chargers. Credit:Joe Mahoney

So far I'm holding out pretty well. At least I'm still a Jarryd Hayne novice, having dismally failed the Herald's "How well do you know Jarryd Hayne?" quiz. Is knowing the answers going to be a citizenship requirement now, on a par with knowing about Donald Bradman? And we're expected to know about Hayne not because he was a gun footballer in the National Rugby League (two Dally M awards, thank you SMH quiz) , but because he padded up for gridiron and ran 117 yards in his two exhibition games to date (thanks again, quiz)?

I don't know much about football but I know enough to know that until about yesterday, American football was regarded among league and union fans here as not just incomprehensible but also somewhat ridiculous. Helmets? Face cages? Shoulder pads? Gimme a break. Here, at least, was something we could sniff at the Yanks about.

But the Hayne hysteria has put on embarrassing display our historical inferiority complex. Cultural cringe was bad enough when we assumed the British arts were better than our home-grown product. Thankfully the days are gone when "what do you like about Australia" was the first question we asked visiting artistes from the UK and the US. I hope, I really hope, that the American press now ask Cate Blanchett and Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman and Hugo Weaving what they like about America. But how much progress have we really made when the measure of our star athlete's success is whether they can get a run with a US team?