Jarryd Hayne has left the NRL. In one season the NRL has lost Sam Burgess, Sonny Bill Williams and Jarryd Hayne. We've got roughly 10 players who are in the NRL Superstar category and those 3 are in their without debate, well those 3 players were in that category. Now they are just former NRL superstars who will never be in the conversation for the immortal honour.

Some say that the NRL has a problem and the fact that we've lost 3 superstars in one season backs up that claim. The NRL needs to do a whole lot more to keep the stars in the game they say. That's all fine and dandy but what exactly could the NRL do to keep Burgess, SBW and Hayne in the NRL? Burgess just wants to try his hand at rugby, I'm pretty sure money wouldn't have been the deal breaker there because he could have basically earned whatever he wanted following his Grand Final performance. SBW? Well the NRL has already bent over backwards for SBW and SBW has a track record of not really caring about your money. Here he is playing for Counties Manukau to win another World Cup with the All Blacks. If SBW was all about the cash he would be playing in France with the NZRU wrapped around his little finger jumping through hoops for his services.

David Smith said after learning of Hayne's departure he was trying to convince Hayne to stay the night before he went public as well as the morning before the announcement - he and the NRL would do anything to keep Hayne in the game. Hayne's taking up an opportunity to try get a chance in the NFL, he's not taking a big money deal, he's just doing what he wants to do.

Some people act like it's the end of the world and that the NRL needs to take drastic action. I'm the complete opposite. All three of the aforementioned players have and will make the NRL proud, observers will look at these athletes and admire them because of what they can do so first of all it sells the NRL in a sense.

Second, we have copious amounts of superstars. Maybe if Cameron Smith, Paul Gallen, Greg Inglis, Jonathan Thurston, Michael Jennings, James Graham, Cooper Cronk, Sam Thaiday, Daly Cherry Evans and Isaac Luke all left to go do something else, then I'd start to get worried. The ratio of superstars vs former superstars appears to easily be in favour of the current superstars.

Lastly, if you hadn't noticed there's an absolute ginormous amount of young players who can fill the superstar boots. The kid replacing Hayne in the Kangaroos - Matt Moylan is a gun. You could make the argument that Moylan had a better season that the Dally M winning Hayne, now I'm willing to go back and forth with anyone on that. Just don't refer to the stats because they don't back me up at all.

Off the top of my head I can name three players under 23 years of age who basically carried their team or had a huge impact on their team's performance this season - Moylan, Anthony Milford and Luke Brooks. Throw in to the mix the likes of Ben Hunt (24) and DCE (25) just for good measure. The world won't end with the departure of a few players, instead it keeps turning and providing greater opportunities for the next superstar.

In the cases of Burgess, SBW and Hayne there isn't a whole lot the NRL could do to keep them. Maybe, just maybe they could tinker with the schedule and amount of football to give players and actual opportunity to rest instead of burning out, but financially I doubt anything they threw at Burgess, SBW and Hayne would have changed anything.

Which leads me to this - the NRL is treating their players terribly, would it be too far to say they are treating them like slaves? No, not when you consider how much footy the superstars of our game have to play. If they want to keep absolutely everyone in the game, then maybe they should look at that before throwing more money their way.

But I really don't see that much of an issue with a few players leaving. What can ya do? Well, first of all you can look at the next crop of superstars who will fill the void.