Cooper the victim of rugby’s safety-first culture
Australian has been sidelined by his state because game no longer trusts maverick talents, writes Daniel Schofield
You can see the parallel in Cipriani failing to get a new deal with Wasps
Quade Cooper remains one of the most gifted playmakers in rugby union. In the modern generation only Beauden Barrett and, before him, Carlos Spencer, possessed a greater range of skills and, having accrued 70 caps for Australia, the 29-year-old fly-half should be operating at the peak of his powers.
Instead, with the Super Rugby season starting this week, Cooper finds himself banished into exile. Brad Thorn, the Queensland Reds coach, decided that Cooper did not fit into his plans and cut him from his squad. “I thought Quade last year … the team struggled, his game management, his attack, his defence [struggled],” Thorn said by way of myopic explanation.
And so Cooper will be playing for the Souths in the Brisbane club rugby scene while picking up the £370,000 a year he is owed from the three-year contract he signed with the Rugby Australia and Queensland Rugby Union in 2016. “Not a perfect situation” says Rugby Australia CEO Raelene Castle, with no little understatement.
The hope is that he will be signed by a foreign club, but there are indications that Cooper is in no rush to move. As Digby Ioane, his former team-mate, says: “Quade’s got the best gig in the world,” as he posts pictures of himself working out with old pals Sonny Bill Williams and James O’connor on Instagram.
So how has it come to this? How can a player who was playing for Australia last summer and was the inspiration of the Reds’ Super Rugby triumph in 2011 become surplus to requirements?
Let us start with Thorn’s public reasoning. No doubt Cooper struggled last season but then so did the Reds as a whole as they won just four games. Most fly-halves tend to underperform behind a retreating pack.
As for defence, this has long been Cooper’s greatest weakness. Again this is true of many stand-offs. Solutions can be found, even if it amounts to hiding them in the back field.
Thorn was not willing to do this with Cooper. He is known to favour having all his players bar his full-back in the defensive line. Yet when you look at his options at fly-half: Hamish Stewart, an untried teenager; and Jono Lance, who has just returned from a semiproductive spell with Worcester Warriors, you have to conclude that it is personal.
A few years ago, Cooper earned public No 1 enemy status in New Zealand for kneeing All Blacks captain Richie Mccaw in the head. The first player to remonstrate with Cooper? That would be Brad Thorn. Leaving that incident aside, you could not find two more divergent characters from Thorn, a hard-as-nails warhorse, to Cooper, a flamboyant fancy-dan. Thorn is also a disciple of New Zealand’s “no d---head policy” that places character above talent, no matter how prodigious. In his attempt to rebuild the Reds in his own image, Thorn decided Cooper’s selfie-loving face did not fit. This is Thorn’s prerogative, albeit one that he will need to back up with results.
The sadness is that all bar a few dozen spectators will be treated to watching Cooper for the foreseeable future. No doubt he will eventually pick up another deal, but more and more coaches, like Thorn, prefer players who fall neatly into boxes.
It is hard not to see a parallel in England with Danny Cipriani not gaining a new deal at Wasps despite playing the best rugby of his career. Rugby used to be built on maverick talents, but it is now becoming increasingly distrustful of them as New Zealand’s mantra of culture-first seeps across the game.