Quade Cooper praised by Sonny Bill Williams on his journey back to the Wallabies and greatness
Quade Cooper is once again the toast of Australian rugby, and Wallabies fans can thank former All Blacks tormentor Sonny Bill Williams for his revival.
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You can break down the relationship between Quade Cooper and Sonny Bill Williams to the simplicity of a plate of breakfast salmon.
“We tend to overcomplicate things, in footy and in life,” Williams said.
When Cooper was cut by Queensland Reds coach Brad Thorn at the end of 2017, he went to live with Williams and his family in Auckland for two months.
“I didn’t have to sit there and console him,” Williams told News Corp. “The kids loved having him around, ‘Uncle Quadey’.
“And kids are always in the moment, you know that saying, ‘Be where your feet are’? That’s kids.
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“So when I would wake up for my morning prayer, at least one of my kids would be up. They’d go into Quade’s room, jump on him, and then we would be up.
“We would be trying to win that day.
“We would train together, then have some good food. We might have had salmon for breakfast.
“And our conversations were deeper than footy, delving into life. And I’d say, ‘How good was it just to be able to have this salmon for breakfast? There are some people in Africa who will never get to eat salmon’.
“How good is it that we can go to the gym?
“In the evenings, we’d say ‘There’s a big session tomorrow, so I’m going to bed early’.
“And then on our day off, we would take a walk with the kids, ‘Let’s explore nature’.
“My wife made us dinner. ‘Thank you my love, how wonderful it is to have a warm meal prepared for us’?
“That is the blessing.”
Cooper was forced to play park football before taking up a contract in Japan with Kintetsu.
Fast-forward four years, 1541 days after his previous international game, and Cooper makes the most remarkable comeback in the Test arena, kicking the winning penalty after the siren to give the underdog Wallabies a win over the world champions, South Africa.
The perspective gained in those two months in the Williams household was credited by Cooper to how this fairytale has unfolded.
“But I hate this idea that I’m the one who turned it around for Quade, because I’ve walked that same walk and Quade was there for me time and again,” Williams said.
“He has done that for me during my dark times, that’s what type of relationship we have, we can talk about topics that get to the depths of life.
“Throughout my career, I had people smile in my face, but I know that smile does not wish me to succeed.
“I’ve been betrayed by the people closest to me.
“That is how we’ve been created, we all have deficiencies. But you put your trust in God, and work hard daily to live a good life, and things will generally turn out better.
“You have to check your ego. The better the man, the better the footballer.
“At that time he was cut by the Reds, it was a massive slap to his ego.
“I have always been a Quade Cooper fan, I know the magic he possesses. But sometimes, when coaches come from different backgrounds, they don’t know how our people work.
“I look at someone like Wayne Bennett who always comes down to the back of the bus, will build a relationship with all types of players. But not everyone can do that.
“So when Quade came to stay with me, we were talking more about life than footy. We can be great at whatever we choose, so long as we have the discipline daily, and live a good life.
“There is always a silver lining. Through that experience, Quade got to go to Europe, to Japan, and he’s come back a better man. Before that he’d just been in a Queensland bubble.
“I’d gone through that as a young man. I went from the bubble of the NRL to Europe where nobody knew who I was.
“And you learn, that athlete’s privilege doesn’t mean anything.
“What I really love about Quade is that he now understands that on that field, he couldn’t do it without Samu Kerevi, without Len Ikitua, Michael Hooper and Rob Valetini and these great players around him who allow him to shine.
“He couldn’t do it without Nic White winning that turnover that gives him that kick to win the game.”
Once again, Cooper is the toast of Australian rugby.
But in those two months of breaking life down with Williams, Cooper learned the lesson that gave him the composure to kick that winning goal: one moment, one game, one coach’s opinion, one period of turbulence, does not define the man or the career.
So appreciate the plate in front of you.
Pure admiration: Old adversary hails Quade fairytale
World Cup-winning coach Steve Hansen has hailed the “fairytale” comeback of Quade Cooper to Test rugby as the evolution of a man who understands his own identity.
As the former All Blacks coach, Hansen at one time was in charge of having his players torment Cooper and expose his weaknesses in Bledisloe Cup encounters.
But it can be revealed that Hansen was among those who rang Cooper last week to wish him well, when Wallabies coach Dave Rennie picked the 33-year-old to make his return to Test rugby after a 1541-day hiatus against world champions South Africa.
As fate would have it, Cooper kicked the winning goal after the siren to hand Australia a famous 28-26 win on the Gold Coast.
“He’s always been a major talent, Quade, but he’s got in his own way,” Hansen said.
“With maturity and age, he’s turned into a lovely young man. The way he spoke was impressive, he’s become totally a team man, he understands his own identity which I think is massive.
“A lot of times our young players and our older ones for that matter come into the game and all they’ve got is rugby, and when rugby doesn’t go well then they struggle.
“He understands his identity not just as a rugby player … he’s a brother, he’s a friend, he’s organised his life around those identities as well and he’s very secure in who he is.
“You saw that in his performance, because better men make better players I think, and he came out and was very confident in what he did.
“He was self-assured without being arrogant, you could just see he was happy in that environment and when you get a player like that with his talent they’re hard to stop.
“Wasn’t it wonderful to see the fairytale at the end?
“He didn’t look like missing a kick all night, most of them went over the black dot, so pretty impressive.”
Hansen and Cooper’s former Wallabies teammate Matt Giteau reflected on the performance of Australia’s five-eighth while announcing their involvement with the new World 12s rugby tournament to launch in August 2022.
The pair are among a growing number of big names involved in the revolutionary 12-a-side competition to be played in England next year, with players from around the world eligible to be selected in eight newly created teams.
Giteau has himself experienced a long-awaited return to Test rugby when he was sensationally picked for the 2015 World Cup from France, a move that changed selection rules in Australia now known as the Giteau Law.
“You saw the way Quade played last night, it was very different to the way Quade played in 2015 or when he first came onto the scene,” Giteau said.
“He’s a lot more mature now, you can see he was the real calm head out there with a lot of younger guys around him.
“I was thrilled for him purely because it had been so long since he’d played. I’d had a similar experience when I came back from France, it had been such a long time, you’ve got a lot of thoughts in your mind whether you can actually still perform at that level, so I was pleased for him.
“He played super well, got the opportunity to win the game as well.”
Cooper kicked a total of 23 points in the win — a career high in his 71 Tests.
The obsession that continually undermines the Wallabies
The Wallabies’ incredible last-gasp win over South Africa on Sunday night will count for nothing unless Rugby Australia pulls on its big boy pants and stops pandering to New Zealand.
Australia’s obsession with trying to beat the All Blacks is doing the Wallabies and their long suffering supporters a massive disservice and needs to stop – or at least be put on hold.
Let’s not understate the magnitude of the win over the Springboks because the South Africans are the reigning world champions and have just pulled off a scintillating series win over the British and Irish Lions.
This is not a great Wallabies team by any stretch but Quade Cooper’s ice cool penalty at the death to win 28-26 was a moment to savour after record defeats over the past few seasons and the ongoing struggle to retain players being lured overseas by more money.
More than anything else, the performance showed that the Wallabies are not the hopeless cause that a lot of people have been led to believe. And that’s largely the fault of Rugby Australia.
The Wallabies are still one of the game’s biggest international draw cards because they can hold their own against every country in the world, bar New Zealand, yet our administrators keep doing deals that work against our best interests.
They love to talk tough but they go weak at the knees as soon as the New Zealanders call our bluff.
That’s the only possible explanation for agreeing to join a full trans-Tasman competition, which runs the risk of being another massacre. No wonder the South Africans have gone elsewhere.
The five-team Australian domestic competition that’s been staged during the past two years has been great for the domestic game – but all the goodwill gets lost once we start playing the New Zealanders.
Rugby Australia would have been much smarter following the English model and building out the domestic club competition that has served the Wallabies so well for so long.
The rugby faithful already know this and have sent that message to the top the old fashioned way – with bums on seats and the number of eyeballs watching games.
That’s why numbers are on the rise at club games and why fans were on the edges of their seats and raving about this year’s epic three-match series against France.
That’s also why so many Australian families flew all the way to Japan for the 2019 World Cup to see the Wallabies up against the likes of Fiji, Georgia and Uruguay.
And that’s why every Wallabies fan in the country is bursting with pride again after the heart-stopping win over the Boks.
Aussie fans just want to see the Wallabies win. It’s that simple.
But the suits still can’t figure it out because they keep signing the Wallabies to play a disproportionately large number of games against the All Blacks.
The old argument that to beat the best you have to play the best doesn’t pass the pub test because no other team in the world has been insane enough to follow Australia’s lead by playing the All Blacks three, sometimes four times a year.
The Springboks only play the All Blacks twice a year, while England, who knocked the All Blacks out of the 2019 World Cup, had played New Zealand just once in the previous five years.
It’s an abusive relationship that inflates New Zealand’s out-of-control ego while denting Australia’s diminishing confidence and it’s time to end it.
Wallabies welcome ‘hell of a player’ back into the fold
First Samu Kerevi, then Quade Cooper, and now Sean McMahon is taking the Wallabies back to the future.
McMahon, who hasn’t played a Test in four years, McMahon is undergoing hotel quarantine and will join Wallabies camp in Queensland on Tuesday.
It is a huge boost to Australia for the remainder of The Rugby Championship and for the northern tour afterwards.
McMahon was thought to be lost to the Wallabies after signing a rich contract with Japanese Top League club Suntory that goes through to March 2023, however, with Covid causing havoc, coach Dave Rennie has nabbed the 27-year-old backrower for the remainder of 2021.
“We didn’t want to get to the stage we are selecting Wallabies based on geography, based on what state they live in because we can’t get guys out of other states,” Rennie told News Corp.
“Someone of Sean’s quality – I coached against him a few years back, he’s my style of player, aggressive and highly skilled, one of the best players playing in the Japanese competition for Suntory.
“He’s very disciplined and in good condition. It’s exciting news, he is a hell of a player.”
Rennie had been hampered by the Giteau Law in not being able to bring McMahon back sooner, given he has only played 26 Tests, but Rugby Australia has made additional allowances this year.
“We’ve been in contact with Sean for the last 18 months, trying to see if he was interested in regard to coming back and playing for the Wallabies again, and there’s always been interest,” Rennie said.
“But obviously he had a commitment overseas and it hadn’t eventuated until now.
“Covid has been a bit of a catalyst. We’re in a position where we’ve got a number of the states closed down we can’t get a number of players out of, Sean was available to come back and quarantine and be available for the remainder of the season.
“We figure while the numbers at the moment are OK, we’re only one or two injuries away from being very thin in that position.”
It’s understood 11-Test Wallaby Isi Naisarani has been given an early release to take up a contract in Japan, and Liam Wright has also been called into camp.
Kerevi made his Test return last weekend against the All Blacks, the first time he’s worn Wallabies gold since the 2019 World Cup.
On Sunday night, Cooper returns to the No. 10 jersey against world champions South Africa on the Gold Coast, marking the end of a 1541-day exile from Tests, having not played for Australia since June 24, 2017, against Italy.
“Everyone who has come in has been excellent,” Rennie said.
“You go back to James O’Connor, who obviously is back playing full-time here now, and his input last year when he could play was outstanding, he’s made a lot of mistakes in his time and has been good enough to share all his learnings with the young fellas.
“Likewise, Quade has been an excellent addition to the group, Samu, they’re good men who are proud Australians and are desperate to wear the jersey again.”
Asked if the Giteau Law could be scrapped altogether by 2023 so he could pick any player from around the globe for the World Cup in France, Rennie replied: “I’m not certain, based on Covid there’s been a little bit of leniency around some of that which has been appreciated.
“We’re still determined to try to encourage guys to come back and commit to rugby here.
“Some of these guys coming into the group and experiencing the culture will hopefully enhance the opportunity to get them back to play Super Rugby and commit long-term.”
Rennie said McMahon, who was holidaying in the United States with his wife and children before the call-up, is unlikely to be considered for next weekend’s second match against the Springboks because he is still studying their game plan in his hotel room, which has been set up like a gym.
Sunday’s game be the first match Australia has played against South Africa since they won the 2019 World Cup, given they withdrew from last year’s TRC due to Covid restrictions.
“They’re a massive team with a lot of experience, they play a simple game of footy very well,” said Rennie, who selected Cooper over Noah Lolesio seeking more in the kicking department.
The Boks are masters of kicking the ball to opponents and daring them to risk attacking, applying great pressure in defence and winning turnovers, penalties or forcing errors – as they did in their recent 2-1 series win over the British & Irish Lions.
“The Lions tried to kick a lot of ball, Wales played them in a World Cup semi, the ball was kicked 81 times in that game,” Rennie said.
“There’s different ways to skin a cat, there’s no one way to play the game.
“They’ve got a style of footy that suits them, they’re happy to play without the ball and back their defence. We’ve got a plan and we’ve got to be good enough to implement it.”
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