Quade Cooper slip-up exposes major problem for Wallabies marketing department
It was an inadvertent giveaway by Quade Cooper but the point was clear; Australian rugby does not have a face, writes JAMIE PANDARAM.
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It was an inadvertent giveaway by Quade Cooper but the point was clear; Australian rugby does not have a face.
There is no marketing gem for the Wallabies to sell their game around.
Quade is gone, Michael Hooper is gone, Taniela Tupou is struggling for form, Mark Nawaqanitawase is going to the NRL, Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii is yet to come.
While the NRL and AFL are flush with names and faces that can cut through the mainstream and are well known by people outside their audience, rugby is facing a personality crisis.
After Joe Schmidt announced his 38-man Test squad for the coming series against Wales and Georgia, the general reaction from non-rugby fans was, “Who?”
Cooper, at his peak the most identifiable Australian rugby player, is among the many supporters of the game yearning for superstars.
Asked by Isaac John on the YKTR (You Know The Rules) podcast this week who the three Wallabies players he would market the game around if given a $1 million budget, Cooper couldn’t get to a third.
“It’s a really hard one, because I don’t know if you’ve watched many rugby union interviews but a lot of the boys are so worried about making mistakes,” Cooper said.
“So I did an interview with Rob Valetini last year, or maybe the year before when we went into camp, he’s the most amazing player, the best dude, he would literally be in the running for best and fairest every week, just a phenomenal player who does everything, the hard stuff, the s**tters, the skilful stuff, he can kick, do everything.
“But we did an interview and it was like he was so nervous and shy, they’d ask him a question and you could just see him getting tense about it.
“But if you see him in our own space, the dude is one of the funny guys, he’s got a great personality, he’s smart.
“So it’s just about finding ways to get the best out of these guys, rather than just going, ‘Oh, he’s a good player, put him in front of the media and ask him questions’. Because that’s not the way to get the best out of him.
“In terms of your question, the guys I would build around, it’s a really hard one to think off the top of my head, Tongan Thor (Taniela Tupou) would be one.
“You’ve got a guy like Mark [Nawaqanitawase] who they were sort of trying to build around, but I don’t think they did a great job. He was getting sponsors, he was getting sponsored by Under Armour and did some pretty cool ads for them, but Asics should have had him – I know they had him at one point.
“But I don’t think there’s been enough to try [to] build these guys.”
Valetini is the reigning John Eales medallist and probably the most marketable player at the moment, given he is assured of a starting spot, has a unique look and consistently performs well.
Tupou has developed a cult following but injuries and form have lessened his marketing appeal. It’s unlikely he will start ahead of Allan Alaalatoa in the Wales series.
Other candidates include Tate McDermott, Andrew Kellaway and Fraser McReight, but few outside the rugby world would recognise them.
Tupou, who was used as the Wallabies’ leading man during the 2022 home series against England and throughout the 2023 World Cup campaign, has been undersold by Rugby Australia, according to Cooper.
“If you knew his personality off the field, you could market the hell out of him, I know they try but I don’t think they do it the right way,” Cooper said. “He should be a lot bigger than what he is.
“Taniela has a big aura, if they managed him better he’d be larger than what he is now.”
Cooper, who now plies his trade in Japan, was a Wallabies teammate of these players just last year.
And the problem with not having genuine superstars to market your game, is the next generation opting for rival codes, Cooper said.
“When you’re saying ‘Come train with the Broncos’ and listing off the names they have, in rugby at the moment we just don’t have the name,” Cooper said.
“So when you’re trying to sell to a kid, ‘Come train here, there’s an opportunity for you here’, they’re looking around going, ‘Who am I looking up to be like?’
“I remember when I was coming through, we had Matt Giteau, Stephen Larkham, players all across the board.
“I watch some of the games [now] and I have no idea who some of the guys are.
“We did this thing one time, we went through and looked at guys who we knew were at the top of the game in rugby at the moment, and looked at their social media and checked how many followers [they had]. Not saying that followers is important … or that doesn’t mean you’re not a good player if you don’t have a big following.
“But what it was saying was that they’re not known well to the public.
“There were guys that are front line Wallabies players who are first choice, one of the first picked every time, and they’ve got like 7000 followers.
“Then you look at someone in the Japanese league, some of our Japanese players who are workers – so they go to work – and they have more followers, in a league that is relatively small unless you’re an international player.
“For me that was a telltale sign that as a game, we’re not doing enough to promote these players.”
Cooper took aim at the game’s administrators and reiterated the wider belief that RA is a boys club.
“The people that run it, it’s the same boys club, the same bunch of people,” Cooper said.
“So when there’s an overhaul, they just replace them with their friends who have the exact same ideas and mentality.”
Originally published as Quade Cooper slip-up exposes major problem for Wallabies marketing department