Adam Ashley-Cooper backs experience to beat youthful exuberance
He may be competing against fitter and faster athletes, but Adam Ashley-Cooper knows he can bring something to the Waratahs that his younger teammates cannot.
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He’ll hear it all this year.
“You’re too old. Too slow. Should have retired”.
But as 34-year-old Adam Ashley-Cooper sat in the Brookvale Oval stands ahead of his return to Super Rugby, he only had the words of Brad Fittler ringing in his ears.
“I remember something Freddy said, not to me but to someone else years ago, about when he was at the back end of his career, he said ‘With all the young guys around me, they’re fitter and faster, but I’m more experienced, and if I’m more experienced and more competitive, then that will beat fit and fast every day of the week’.
“I’ve held onto to that,” Ashley-Cooper said.
“It’s so true, you just can’t beat experience, and I’ve got a lot of it to share. And I want to compete, so that’s a really good recipe for me to go out there and perform, which is exactly what I want to do.”
Ashley-Cooper takes the field on Saturday night for his first Super match in four years, wearing the No.13 jersey he was in when he led NSW to their maiden premiership in 2014, directly opposing Matt Proctor, who wore the No.13 jersey for the Hurricanes in their maiden premiership win in 2016.
Most believed Ashley-Cooper’s time in Australian rugby had expired when he joined French side Bordeaux after the 2015 World Cup.
He spent two years at the club before joining Japan’s Kobe Steelers in 2017.
“Now thinking about it, I went to France with such ambition to make a big difference, contribute in big ways, take my experience of international football to a club in France, and it just didn’t really work out,” Ashley-Cooper said.
“I felt like I wasn’t contributing, like I wasn’t adding value and being valued, so I had a real feeling of unfulfillment.
“When I left and went to Japan, I started to contribute and I felt like I was making a difference around me with the guys in the team, and that’s a really good feeling. That’s probably what gave me a taste of what I could achieve with this team here and potentially with the Wallabies.”
Ashley-Cooper felt the itch to make a return to the Wallabies, and worked out a plan with coaches in Japan including Scott Hansen, now interim head coach of the Sunwolves, that included a mammoth five-month pre-season regimen to have him firing in the Top League.
Ashley-Cooper’s grind paid dividends when Wallabies coach Michael Cheika recalled him to the Wallabies squad late last year against Italy, and the Waratahs offered him a base contract worth just $85,000, giving him the opportunity to pursue a fourth World Cup.
Now he’s back, Ashley-Cooper understands exactly what will be required of him at NSW to be on that plane to Japan in September.
“Be a world-class player,” he said.
“My job is to create a nightmare for the head coach [Daryl Gibson] around selection. I know if I’ve created that nightmare, I’m doing my job and creating healthy competition for backline spots in the team.
“The expectation is more individual. I’ve put a big expectation on myself, more than any other year, because there is a bit of criticism out there of why I’m back, and there’s big goals I’ve set myself.
“I know that at the end of the day I gave it a shot, because I’d kick myself if I didn’t.”
Few expect the Waratahs to recreate their title-winning exploits this year, but Ashley-Cooper sounded a stark warning.
“I feel like this team is in much better shape than we were at the start of our 2014 campaign,” Ashley-Cooper said.
“That was a special year so it’s hard to compare, but this team has got a really good mixture of youth, experience, personalities and characters. There’s no egos.
“There’s just a lot of enthusiasm and a dynamic to do great things.”
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