‘None of your business’: Is the new, guarded Nicho Hynes onto a winner?

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The most revelatory words spoken by Nicho Hynes this week were not the ones that made the headlines. Not the declaration that he “doesn’t give a rat’s” anymore about personal criticism, or the reiteration that he’s done with “people disrespecting the Sharks”.

It was the little wisecrack in response to a journalist’s question about what motivates him. “It’s none of your business,” Hynes shot straight back, then cracked up laughing. He was relaxed.

Yes, he was 48 hours out from the final before the potential grand final, and things did not end well for Cronulla or Hynes against the Storm this time last year. But he had also just landed in his old home of Melbourne, and there were only four media at the airport to interview him instead of the dozen or more who might have peppered him with more pointed questions in Sydney.

That is all relevant to this story, too. But the actual words grab you first, because they give away what Hynes is no longer willing to give away. What motivates the 29-year-old version of the million-dollar halfback from Umina is more private than even his 27-year-old self. The book is not as open as it used to be. These days he rarely speaks publicly about his difficult upbringing, challenging road to the NRL and period of depression that shaped his early adulthood.

And then you think back to the interview he did just before this season, when he told Fox League he’d “learned a hell of a lot of lessons last year [and] I’m really glad it’s happened”. There was “a lot said about me in the media at the backend of the year”, and it took the off-season to really find himself again and understand what had to happen to channel those lessons into playing better footy.

“Staying away from people’s opinions and social media, and just really focusing on my life and controlling what I can control,” he said in March. “I can’t control what people are going to say. I can’t control the experts on TV talking about certain things. It’s just not worrying about the naysayers out there.”

Hynes finished last season in the spotlight.

Hynes concluded he was starting 2025 “probably the happiest I’ve ever been in my life, the most ready I’ve ever been for a game of footy”. As if to prove his point, the naysayers in the comments section posted things such as “Wait ’till round 1 and we will get the sad-looking Nicho again” and “He’s ready until it’s a big game” (there was also nice stuff like “Greatest endorsement for the game Nicho Hynes” and “We are with you Nicho. Go hard!“).

Most NRL viewers will have some idea about the opinions which follow Hynes wherever he goes. Let’s call it assumed knowledge. The big-money move from the Storm that automatically started his Sharks career under “under the magnifying glass” (teammate Jesse Ramien’s words this week). The 2022 Dally M Medal in his first season as a full-time starter and the first of two “spirit of the game” Provan-Summons Medals.

Then the dips in performance, injuries and State of Origin false starts. And the 37-10 qualifying final defeat to the Storm in Melbourne last year that sparked all those questions about his big salary and even selection, and had coach Craig Fitzgibbon citing “confirmation bias”.

It all mooshed together to form the narrative that Hynes’s form gets more wobbly as the stakes get higher. But that hypothesis no longer holds under examination. Because the Hynes of 2025 is 20 storeys up a skyscraper, midway through a solo high-wire tightrope walk, and to the naked eye looking as steady as Philippe Petit completing his “artistic crime of the century” between the Twin Towers.

To this, the analysts could counter: “But he is not high enough; he hasn’t achieved anything until he’s dicing with death from the 80th floor”. The other, more interesting observation is that the naked eye cannot see into the mind of a person with enough empty air below to swallow him up with the slightest misstep. And Hynes is not letting us in as much anymore to have a look.

The old Hynes was as transparent as they come, and his honesty around mental health broke new ground. “I was a serial overthinker, big stress-head – I just used to go to bed stressing over the stupidest shit,” Hynes told Mamamia’s No Filter podcast in March last year. “What people are thinking about me. What social media is saying about me. Or news articles. Or just anything in life, random as stuff.”

The turning point was a spell living in Mackay and working as a teacher’s aide at a primary school. If you had only ever heard the audio of him telling The Matty Johns Podcast about troubled kids excitedly calling him ‘Mr Hynes’, his intonation is almost teenage-like in its guilelessness. To add the visual – the ripped, shaggy-haired specimen – somehow makes it sound different. All those vulnerabilities coming from all that invulnerable lean muscle mass – what a bizarre, institutionalised incongruity to draw in 2025.

Rugby league, however, has not quite let go of the stigma around soft personalities playing the hard game. “Soft” in this context meaning not just gentle and generous, but also carrying delicate-flower connotations. Insecurities are okay to acknowledge, just don’t acknowledge them too much. Talk about the outside noise – even add a bit of bite – but use your inside voice for the internal noise. We embrace your candour and celebrate you as one of the truly modern rugby league men – it just isn’t fit for purpose in this world.

Of course, this says more about the world than it does Hynes, but it is a world in which he has chosen to operate. And it would be fascinating to know whether his work with the mindset coaches he employed to help with the added pressure of Sydney’s NRL fishbowl has shifted to a more guarded approach. Maybe not. Maybe the very notion is just contributing to the flood of outside noise he has learned to ignore.

“I knew it was going to be a completely different scene going back to Sydney, and then being the player I’d become, and media and outside noise and all the external things that happened. I didn’t know to the extent that it was going to happen. But in saying that, it comes with the job,” Hynes said in Melbourne on Wednesday.

“You get hidden away down here, which is really nice, and you only have one or two people rock up usually – you guys down here in the media. But then in Sydney you have 10 people rock up and obviously all the papers and the media and all that stuff up there, it’s times 10.

“That’s probably the beauty about playing for Melbourne – you don’t get to be recognised as much down here, you don’t get the media spotlight as much. In Sydney, you get extra things off the field that you can do with your sponsorship and events that you can go to, so both have pros and cons.

Nicho Hynes celebrates Cronulla’s emphatic win over Canberra last weekend.

“But I’m just loving my time and really having fun at the moment up in Sydney with the Sharks.”

Life is definitely more fun when you’re in form, starring in last weekend’s defeat of minor premiers Canberra and part of a team on a run of nine wins from their last 10 games. Cronulla are as close as they’ve ever come to repeating their 2016 premiership, and Hynes’s now-seamless halves partnership with Braydon Trindall is central to the success.

Twelve months ago, when things weren’t going so well, Paul Gallen offered a counterpoint to the condemnation, pointing out that Hynes did not start first grade as a playmaker and was “probably still learning that process”. “We judge him so highly probably because he’s on so much money,” Gallen wrote for Wide World of Sports. “And we’ve got Andrew Johns, Johnathan Thurston, Cooper Cronk commenting on what he does. It’s not fair. They are elite. They are special players.”

Toby Rudolf believes Hynes is a special player, but has reaped rewards from “simplifying his role”. “It’s what the team needed. Our team doesn’t need the big over-the-top players,” Rudolf says. “It needs a calm, steady head and hand. He’s an inspirational leader on and off the field. People, he might ask me how I’ve been seeing him, but he’s always the one checking in on me. He’s always the one checking in on his teammates.

“Whether that’s because of the mental space he’s so passionate about that he works in … he’s the one that he’d be able to do this interview a lot better about me than me about him. I try and sort of emulate him a bit in some ways, but whether I’m just too caught up in my own world, maybe you could call me a bit selfish at times. He’s just the opposite of that – he’s a selfless dude that is always thinking of others before himself. I think everyone could use a bit of Nicho in their lives.”

Discourse about a full-blown personality change seem over the top. Hynes is still running mental health workshops for junior players and heavily involved in community work. He is still, for all intents and purposes, a nice guy. He is just apparently not Mr Nice Guy, because he is now “salty” and outspoken in defending criticism directed towards his Sharks.

“External noise is external noise, so I don’t see it, I don’t hear it,” he said. “The only time I hear it is if the boys talk about it coming at our team. That’s when I get a little bit frustrated.

“I couldn’t give a rat’s about what people say about me. Everyone’s said what they can say and there’s nothing left. They can’t say more about me because it’s already been said. I don’t see it. I’m not really on social media much any more.

“Everyone has different internal [and] external motivations … some boys have been vocal about what motivates them and what’s been annoying them over the last few weeks, and some stay quiet. Everyone has a different motivation to why to play their game and why to win and I’ve got mine.”

So what motivates him? “It’s none of your business.”

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