Whatever people say Aidan Sezer is, that's what he's not

Ask supporters of any of Aidan Sezer’s former clubs what they think of their former scrum-half and there’s every chance no two answers would be the same.

As a Leeds fan, I don’t have too many fond memories of Sezer’s time at Headingley. To be honest, I don’t have many memories of Sezer in a Leeds shirt at all. It’s not entirely his fault: I’ve tried my best to forget most of Rohan Smith’s time in charge of the Rhinos. But I certainly wasn’t the only Leeds supporter who was nonplussed that the club moved on from Sezer after only two seasons — although given he was replaced by Matt Frawley, it can hardly be said for the better.

Yet listening to last week’s Forty20 podcast I was intrigued to hear Phil Caplan — one of the leading authorities on the subject of Leeds RL — defend Sezer’s time in blue and amber, pointing to the fact that he helped the Rhinos to a Grand Final in his first campaign only to miss the decider due to concussion. It’s a fair argument, but not enough to explain why in the (extremely!) unlikely event someone stuck a gun to my head and asked me to tell them Sezer’s most influential game for the Rhinos I’d struggle to come up with an answer. If being a better number seven than Matt Frawley is the benchmark, then Leeds would still be running around with Jordan Lilley at scrum-half.

At Huddersfield it was almost the complete reverse. For a start, he was succeeding the painfully underwhelming Frawley rather than being replaced by him. Signed as the Giants’ first ever marquee player, Sezer was immediately made captain and ended his debut campaign on the Man Of Steel shortlist. But for all he excelled personally, the team failed to make the play-offs as coach Simon Woolford left before the end of the season. And much like his time Leeds, an injury-disrupted second year meant Huddersfield weren’t as gutted as you might have expected about his exit after another season finishing outside the play-offs — particularly when they finished third and reached the Challenge Cup final the following year with the unheralded Olly Russell guiding the team around the park, although a quick look at the current Super League table will tell you that was a short-lived mirage.

But it was at Canberra Raiders in the NRL that Sezer was at his most tantalisingly enigmatic. It has become a running joke on the Boom Rookies podcast (a big inspiration behind the Real Class podcast) that co-host and Canberra fan Nick Campton will never, ever give up on Sezer, no matter how old he gets or how patchy his form might be at any given time. Campton is an excellent writer — this on Jimmy ‘The Jet’ Roberts is a personal favourite — and he penned an article titled ‘Aidan Sezer won’t let you go’ for the Daily Telegraph in August 2019, only a few months before Sezer became the first scrum-half to lead the Raiders to the Grand Final in 25 years, a game they lost agonisingly and controversially to the Sydney Roosters:

It’s safe to say Sezer has been the most polarising player among Canberra fans in recent years and, through factors and circumstance that aren’t always his fault, flirted with becoming the player he promised to be without ever really shattering the constraints which have kept him grounded.
What made Sezer so enthralling as a recruit, and why I have always been a believer, even at his lowest ebbs is that he can do just about everything from a technical standpoint. His left boot is an absolute howitzer and when he hits the ball clean it stays hit.
He can pass short and long and he can do it both ways. He’s quick and he’s fast on his feet. If you were building a half from scratch you couldn’t do much better to give him the physical tools of Aidan Sezer.
On paper, and on talent he’s in the conversation as Canberra’s best halfback since Ricky Stuart - admittedly, it’s not a hot field, but none of the others ever played in a preliminary final.
But if you ask some Canberra fans what ails them and fails them, if you ask them the cause of all their complaint, Sezer is the one who cops it. Sezer can also get inside his own head sometimes in a way where one error compounds another.
...
Maybe it’s too hard for me to admit Sezer isn’t the player I believed him to be. Maybe he’s the kind of player who can go this far and no further, maybe he could have been a representative player if the cards fell other ways. There is enough of the good and the bad you can twist Aidan Sezer into just about whatever you want him or need him to be.

And no matter which way you twist Sezer, it will never take long before he snaps in a different direction.

A flakey scrum-half who can’t be trusted when the going gets tough? Sometimes, maybe. But he’s also the guy who scored a brace on his Canberra debut to ice a victory over Penrith Panthers while being unable to see out of one eye having fractured its socket. A mercurial talent who can’t be trusted to lead a team to the biggest games? Well, a record of appearing in only three play-off series across thirteen seasons would suggest so. But in those three play-off campaigns he’s guided two sides to Grand Finals — while on the third occasion, in 2016, Canberra fell one game short, losing 14-12 at minor premiers Melbourne in what was the Raiders’ first Grand Final qualifier in almost two decades.

So what Aidan Sezer were we meant to get at his latest club, Hull FC? In our season preview episode of the Real Class podcast I scoffed at Hull following Huddersfield’s lead and immediately appointing him their captain. Sezer is coming off the back of a single season at West Tigers in which they won a third-consecutive wooden spoon. He’d failed to fulfil his role as an experienced, calm head, spending the campaign either suspended or being completely overshadowed by rookie half Lachie Galvin. Hull were even more of a rabble in 2024 than the Tigers, finishing the year level on six points with a London Broncos team made up of semi-pro players, and the omens weren’t good when they ditched their plan to partner Sezer in the halves with Jordan Abdull before a ball had been kicked, releasing Abdull from his contract while the ink was still drying after a knee injury proved worse than initially feared.

But in Hull’s new boss John Cartwright, Sezer has been reunited with the coach who gave him his NRL debut with Gold Coast Titans in 2012. Cartwright, much like Campton, has been unequivocal in his faith in Sezer. After Hull produced a stunning comeback at Wigan to knock the reigning champions out of the Challenge Cup, Cartwright described his scrum-half’s performance as “the best game I've seen him play for a long, long time, if ever. He turned the game.”

Currently topping the Man of Steel rankings, the key to Sezer’s resurgence has been the revival of his running game, which previously deserted him when he was at his most frustratingly passive at Leeds. It sounds counterproductive, but the more selfish Sezer is on the ball, the more creative he becomes for his teammates, who suddenly have more time and space around them with defenders attracted towards their skipper. After five league games, he has seven try assists, including two at Wakefield last Friday that proved the difference between Hull winning and losing. “When it wasn't happening,” Cartwright said post-match, “Aidan just decided to run the ball.”

It’s too early to suggest Sezer has changed. Hull fans should beware the pattern of his form faltering after eye-catching starts at previous clubs. But fans of those clubs should also swallow their pride and admit that whatever they thought of Sezer when he left, their team’s fortunes rarely improved thereafter. That might feel like a backhanded compliment, but if anything was going to sum up Aidan Sezer’s career, it has long since been destined to be a contradiction. ⬧