Cooper makes Reds pay for demotion
OPINION: The Reds can bang on about performance all they like when the Quade Cooper question comes up, but Berrick Barnes is correct.
Roughly A$650,000 (NZ$700,000) a season to play club rugby in Brisbane? ‘‘Strange’’ doesn’t even scratch the surface.
Yet that is what is happening after coach and storied All Blacks hardman Brad Thorn told Cooper he no longer had a role to play in the squad at Ballymore late last year.
‘‘I thought Quade last year ... the team struggled, his game management, his attack, his defence [struggled],’’ Thorn said last week.
Let us unpack this classic rugby tale.
Cooper is brought home from France in 2016 by Wallabies coach Michael Cheika on a three-year silly-money deal bank rolled by the Queensland Rugby Union and Rugby Australia.
One report at the time of his December demotion last year put the deal at A$800,000 (NZ$866,000) per season. Deduct from that figure a year’s worth of test match payments and it looks more like A$650,000 (NZ$700,000). Per year. For the next two years. Cooper’s contract doesn’t expire until the end of 2019. He only signed the thing 18 months ago.
That’s some gardening leave. The question is, can the Reds and Rugby Australia afford it?
QRU management and board are standing by Thorn’s call and Rugby Australia do not seem to mind either. Nationally, the sport’s governing body has myriad hungry mouths to feed, while boardroom gossip has the Reds on skid row financially.
Yet there is mercurial Quade Cooper, a fan drawcard - if not a matchwinner - for almost 12 years now, sharing his home renovations and daily workouts with the world, but none of his rugby talent, while the money from Australian rugby coffers continues to pile up in his bank account.
Of course, everyone at Ballymore is hoping the suddenly unwanted Cooper will blitz through the first few stages of grieving - shock, pain, anger - and hit his ‘upward turn’ sooner rather than later.
Except - and here’s the sting in the tail - multiple sources say that Cooper is in no rush to find another deal and unburden himself from the Reds and Australian rugby. He signed a contract in good faith and is happy to lend his considerable talent to Souths in the Brisbane Premier Rugby comp.
On the one hand it’s eyewateringly selfish. But on the other?
Having endured the humiliation of being told that after a decade of service the Reds need neither his rugby, his leadership, his experience, nor his face on billboards, you can forgive the man for making them pay.