AS he descended the steps from Newcastle District Court to a waiting 4WD, a deadlocked jury and two-week rape trial behind him, Jarryd Hayne was looking to the future.
"I told the truth," Hayne said of his nearly three days in the witness box.
"We'll do it all again."
Hayne, 32, will find out next week if the DPP will prosecute him again over allegations he twice raped a woman, then 26, at her home at Fletcher on the night of the 2018 NRL grand final.
But given the publicity around the case and the DPP's attitude about retrials, there is little doubt prosecutors will elect to take the matter to trial for round 2, likely sometime in 2021.
The hung jury in Hayne's trial was the second time in as many weeks that a jury determining the fate of an NRL player accused of rape was unable to reach a verdict.
St George Illawarra Dragon and accused rapist Jack de Belin will face a retrial in April, 2021.
In Hayne's case it appeared the jury were world's apart and fundamentally disagreed about what happened in the woman's bedroom on that night in 2018.
After writing a note on Friday to say they were deadlocked and could not reach a unanimous verdict, the jury were encouraged to continue deliberating and reconvened on Monday morning.
But after deliberating for another three hours on Monday the jury delivered another note that read: "After examining all the evidence and considering all of the jurors' views, it is evident that we will not be able to come to a unanimous agreement. "This decision has not been made lightly as we have re-examined all the evidence and no amount of time and deliberation will be able to change this."
Judge Peter Whitford, SC, then gave the jury a majority verdict direction - telling them he would accept an 11-1 verdict if they could not be unanimous - and asked them to continue deliberating.
But less than 15 minutes later the jury wrote another note that read: "We are not able to reach 11 jurors for a decision. No amount of time or deliberation even with that option will change this decision."
Judge Whitford then discharged the jury. Hayne remains on bail and will not have to appear in Newcastle District Court next week when the matter will likely be set down for trial again.
Hayne, once one of the biggest names in Australian sport, had pleaded not guilty to two counts of aggravated sexual intercourse without consent and inflict actual bodily harm.
He had faced the maximum of 20 years in jail on each count.
The trial and closing addresses focused on the evidence of Hayne and the woman, with the jury ultimately split on the critical issue of what exactly happened in the woman's bedroom at Fletcher on the night of the 2018 NRL grand final.
The woman gave evidence that the pair had struck up a flirtatious relationship on social media before arranging to meet at her house at Fletcher on the night of the 2018 NRL grand final.
Hayne had been in Newcastle that weekend attending a two-day buck's party for a fellow rugby league player.
After an awkward interaction in her bedroom, during which Hayne serenaded her with Ed Sheeran covers, the woman became aware that Hayne had kept a taxi waiting outside to continue driving him back to Sydney.
The woman gave evidence that after realising he wasn't planning on staying long and was just after sex, she resolved not to have any sexual interaction with him.
But she claimed he forced himself on her on her bed, tried to kiss her and then pulled off her pants before engaging in two sexual acts that left blood on her bed and Hayne's face.
The woman has said she repeatedly told Hayne "no" and "I don't want to", a claim Hayne repeatedly denied during the trial.
Hayne had given evidence that the woman kissed him back and it progressed to oral sex.
He said when they noticed the woman was bleeding they both stopped, with Hayne telling the woman he must have clipped her with his fingernail.
He then told the woman to go to a doctor the next day and got back in the taxi to Sydney.
During his closing address on Thursday, defence barrister Phillip Boulten, SC, told the jury Hayne's sexual prowess was "terrible" and the sex was "bad".
But he said if the woman had not bled profusely from a laceration to her genitalia then there would have been no allegation of sexual assault made against the former NRL star.
"It was bad sex," Mr Boulten said last week. "If there hadn't been blood though, it's unlikely there would have been any complaint made against Jarryd Hayne of sexual assault."
He said Hayne had "stuck solid" in his evidence and created enough reasonable doubt about what happened in the woman's bedroom at Fletcher on the night of the NRL grand final for the jury to acquit him.
During his closing, Crown prosecutor Brian Costello had told the jury that the woman's evidence of what happened - which may have been even worse on Hayne's version - meant Hayne had "no reasonable grounds" to believe the woman was consenting to sexual activity.
He said the woman was "filthy" about the taxi waiting outside during his whirlwind visit to her Fletcher home and said she told her mother there was "no way" she would be having sex with the former NRL star.
And then - after he went outside and told the cab driver to keep waiting - Hayne "ignored" her in her bedroom and watched the dying stages of the NRL grand final.
He then came into her room and broke her bed. "If she was already in a bad mood about the taxi and that he was just there for sex and raised it with her mother," Mr Costello said. "Then none of the events that followed would have improved her mood."
Mr Costello said Hayne's attitude towards the woman, picked up in a telephone intercept about six weeks after the alleged attack, was consistent with how the woman says he behaved on the night.
"Just some silly young cow who messaged him off Instagram," Mr Costello said, a reference to what Hayne had said.
"When that silly young cow said no to him after he left the grand final and the buck's party he simply ignored her wishes and got what he came there for by being forceful and rough.
"The only thing that stopped that sexual activity when it did was the fact that he was so rough that he caused her to bleed significantly."
Mr Costello said the woman was honest and open throughout the entire episode; from the lead-up to meeting Hayne to her evidence in the witness box. And he said the jury would accept her evidence, and reject Hayne's evidence as "unreliable or dishonest or both".
And Mr Costello said something the woman had said, during a heated moment of her cross-examination, pretty much summed up the case.
"No means f---ing no," the woman said in a moment of raw emotion. "He f---ing knows what he did."
It seems the jury, after hearing two weeks of evidence and deliberating for more than eight hours, could not be so sure.
