Cooper set to quit Wallabies
20 Nov 2012
Quade Cooper could switch to rugby league or even take up boxing after being ‘insulted’ by the Australian Rugby Union’s latest contract offer.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the ARU is effectively forcing Cooper out of the game by offering him an incentive-based contract that is usually reserved for rookies. If he was to accept this deal, he would be regarded as below the top 30 players in Australia.
Cooper was fined A$40,000 recently for criticising the Wallabies and coach Robbie Deans, but when fit, he remains an asset to Australian rugby. In 2011, he was the Super Rugby Player of the Year.
If he decides to walk out on the Wallabies, he could also break his three-year deal with the Queensland Reds.
Switching codes and competing in rugby league is now a realistic option, and there is even speculation that he could take up boxing, fighting on the undercard of Sonny Bill Williams’s bout with Francois Botha next February.
17 Comments
20 Nov 2012, 07:35 am
One punch and he’s out of boxing too.
Such a shame…. great talent.
20 Nov 2012, 07:46 am
This guy is hilarious. Thinks he is the bees knees. He was lucky to get the offer he did.
20 Nov 2012, 09:01 am
This guy is a joke.
I would love to see him get his a$$ handed to him in the ring.
Now just wondering.
If does not accept the terms and conditions does that mean he is no longer bound to a club or union?
He will be a free agent of the sorts.
What would happen if the Kings threw some mad money at him?
20 Nov 2012, 09:03 am
Good riddance show pony!!!
20 Nov 2012, 09:08 am
Isnt’ he a New Zealander? Why not go home and play there…
20 Nov 2012, 09:12 am
To effectively run the ” I want to be SBW fans Club” he can’t be bound by a contract
20 Nov 2012, 09:29 am
@Gumboots-5:
Why?
We have alot better #10s in our ITM cup, more consistent.
Anyway he made his bed….time to sleep in it.
20 Nov 2012, 09:45 am
The guy is an idiot. A sometimes talented idiot, but still an idiot with a highly inflated opinion of himself. He is also not the guy that will lead the Wallabies to eventual success over the AB’s. He has taken so many cheap shots at McCAw that the hard men in the AB team have a target permanently painted on him. He subsequently spends most of the AB games trying to keep his body intact rather than use his natural talents. Got the brain of a pea and the spine of a chicken. Only trouble is that he won’t last 5 minutes in a boxing ring and no one in League gets to run away from tackling like Quade does in Union. They might take a punt on him, but he will never be a star and probably will fade into oblivion. A potentially good career in Union wasted because he is to brainless to see the truth and too full of himself to admit it even if he could see it.
20 Nov 2012, 12:12 pm
Off to Rugby League?
Better learn to tackle first Quade.
Ain’t no place to hide in the NRL.
20 Nov 2012, 13:14 pm
@cane-9: They’ll belt him all day long in the NRL, If he thinks there were cheap shots in Rugby he hasn’t seen anything
20 Nov 2012, 13:20 pm
@Hurricane-7: He won’t make it in NZ, Kiwi 10′s can actually tackle.
20 Nov 2012, 15:41 pm
Personally I’m a massive fan of Quade Cooper…. I know I’m in a minority, but if you ask me the guy has so much talent it’s scary.
- Arrogant, yes
- Individualistic, yes
- Inconsistent, yes
But when he’s on form, he is a joy to watch. Makes everyone else look like schoolboys.
I don’t think he should be a flyhalf… Too much responsibility for a loose cannon like him. He should have been a 12. Leave the game-management to someone else and just let him play his natural game.
20 Nov 2012, 16:42 pm
Not sure why everyone thinks he can’t handle himself. I heard he put one of the big Ozzie forwards on their *** a while ago.
You also probably thought baby jake couldn’t fight…
20 Nov 2012, 19:43 pm
Whether people want to admit it or not, Quade Cooper is the most talented Young 10 on the planted.outside Carter no one is nearly as gifted as Cooper.None
And last year with Reds he put on a clinic throughout the season,top scorer,most assists,2nd most offloads,most kicking metres etc u name it
Was at 10 and Wallabies reclaimed the Tri Nations
At 10 Oz do not have any player anywhere near his league when he’s on form.Even Beale or Oconnor at 10.
With him at 10 it hid a lot of Aussie deficiencies due to how freakishly talented he is.
He is a better player than Aaron Cruden,as good as he was this year Cruden he was nothing in comparison to Cooper masterclass last year.Slade,Barrett too aint as good as Cooper.He would make AB’s.For Boks he would kill the SA 10′s
Saying he’s rubbish is like saying Zlatan Ibrahimovic is **** or Kevin Pietersen is rubbish.That’s false however u look at it.
20 Nov 2012, 20:05 pm
This article sums it up for me:
Breathtaking with his brilliance, but …
November 20, 2012 – 8:47PM
Peter FitzSimons
What then, when the days grow cold and we grow old, will we say of Quade Cooper? Quade Who?
Yes, sadly, you’re right.
Whether Cooper will be remembered at all is a moot point. Personally, it would amaze me if his fragile brand of brilliance translates well to rugby league – can anyone see him stopping Paul Gallen on the boil? – and I am even more fearful for him in trying to pay the rent on his boxing skills. (Seriously, who came up with that idea?)
No, from this point, the most likely fate for Cooper is to send a sizzle reel of his ”season-to-end-reason,” 2010, to Japan or the like, pick up a lucrative contract there and relatively quickly fade from view.
Still, what a season that was! And what a strange lead-in …
He first came to the attention of the wider rugby community when he came off the bench for the Wallabies against Italy in 2008, and scored a breath-taking try with his first touch of the ball. We then had the bewildering episode a year later of him being charged by police with stealing two laptops, only for the charges to be withdrawn, after ”completion of a justice mediation process with the complainants”.
It was the first sign of a lack of character, and was not the stuff that Wallabies were made of, and yet in that subsequent 2010 season, Cooper was brilliant from first to last. Back in his day, David Campese could send a bolt of electricity through every chair in the stadium, every time he touched the ball, and for a short, glorious time, Cooper was like that. The following year he guided Queensland to its Super Rugby championship he could do things with the ball and pull off sidesteps which put him in space that we had not seen before – at least not coming from the one man.
But could he cope with the pressures that come from being for a brief time the most exciting player in world rugby? Decidedly, no.
From last year’s World Cup on, his life has been a litany of injuries, terrible form and ever more bizarre and wounding public comments – with all the wounds showing up on his own career and reputation.
Look, none of us will ever know how devastating it would be to find yourself, in the land of your birth – New Zealand – being hooted and booed by 50,000 people as you took the field in a World Cup semi-final playing against the All Blacks, but from the moment he put his opening kick-off of that match out on the full, it was obvious that Cooper could not master the situation.
A devastating knee injury in his next game provided the full-stop to a very ordinary year, while this year was not much more than an ellipsis …
What little we have seen of Cooper on the field this year has shown a player no more than a shadow of what he was in 2010, and all of his headlines have come from the ”toxic” tweets, and all the rest. It is all rather sad.
Sometime, somewhere, someone needed to sit him down and say, ”Quade, you have more raw talent in your little finger than most players have in their whole bodies, but, in the end that is not enough. You have to get a grip, my man, settle down, train hard, work on developing your game and every time you feel like having a whinge, do a hundred sit-ups and a hundred push-ups until the urge passes.” That appears not to have happened.
So what will we say? I think it will be something like this:
On his day, Quade Cooper was a breathtakingly brilliant player, a streak of light across the sky in an otherwise fairly dull rugby night. The pity is he could not have shone stronger for longer.
Good luck, Quade.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-union/australia-rugby/breathtaking-with-his-brilliance-but-8230-20121120-29n39.html#ixzz2CmrxxBNK
20 Nov 2012, 20:08 pm
Shockingly though, Cooper won 86% of the 7 Tests he played against the Boks.
20 Nov 2012, 23:00 pm
@mshiniwami-14: Agreed… Back in the day of amateur rugby, it was common place to see one guy running through a team or dazzling defences with sidestepping etc… But in the modern game, with defences as structured as they are and with the level as high as it is, it’s very rare to find someone who makes everynoe else look average.
Quade Cooper, when in form, is that player.
Incredible talent. Sad to see him go.
Have your say
You must be logged in to post a comment.