Quade Cooper is the Paganini of the Pass

 
Spiro Zavos Columnist

By , 8 Mar 2010 Spiro Zavos is a Roar Expert

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Reds Quade Cooper is tackled by Chiefs Brendon Leonard in a Super 14 Rugby match, Waikato Stadium, Hamilton, New Zealand, Friday, March 05, 2010. AAP Image/NZPA, Wayne Drought.

It’s Oscar time and The Roar’s Oscar for the pass of the rugby season is Quade Cooper’s no-look/pop-up pass to Will Chambers to put him under the Chiefs posts without a defender laying a hand on him.

The pass was pure magic. It was done so cleverly that one second Cooper had the ball in his hand running at the Chiefs defence, with Reds runners racing through with him, and the next second Chambers was dotting down. The Chiefs defenders didn’t know what had happened until they looked at the big screen.

I hesitate for obvious reasons to say that the episode was rather like a thief in the night unpicking a lock, taking the possession, and getting away before the inhabitants of the house even knew they were being robbed.

The pass confirmed for me that Quade Cooper is the Paganini of the Pass. He is able to get the ball away, with a sympathetic speed and loft for easy handling, in any situation.

The Chambers pass came with him taking the ball to the line (would that other Australian number 10s do the same!). On other occasions he floated long cut-out passes to put his wide men into space. And on other occasions he was able, magically, to get passes away even when he was severely dumped on his back by the unimpressed Chiefs forwards.

The new interpretations of the tackle law (which are, in fact, the old and correct interpretations), require tacklers to release the tackled player, even in ball and all tackles, before the tackler or his team-mates can play at the ball.

This fraction of a second is all Cooper needs when he is tackled to get away his passes.

Cooper, like Benji Marshall, has played a lot of touch football. This is a passing game, at speed. Cooper like Marshall has an amazing variety of passes he has learnt as a touch player, passes he can now release under the new intepretations. The Australian Women’s Seven side won the first IRB World Championship using touch footballers. Perhaps some Super 14 franchises should do the same thing.

The contrast between Cooper’s passing game and that of Berrick Barnes is startling. Barnes was good value under the old interpretations because he was tough enough to hold on in the tackle and place the ball back. Cooper was easily wrapped up ball and all.

Under the new intepretations, which put a premium on holding on to the ball and passing not kicking (Waratahs please note!), Cooper has sparked the Reds (even the seriously under-strength side that played the Chiefs) to two convincing victories against two strong New Zealand sides, the Crusaders and the Chiefs.

Against the Sharks, Barnes resorted to unintelligent kicking, along with Luke Burgess (an Oscar winner for the best imitation of a still life), Daniel Halangahu, Lachlan Turner and Drew Mitchell that drew boos from the normally partisan crowd at the Sydney Football Stadium.

I usually try to stay silent watching games and take notes (as befits someone who is supposed to be an impartial analyst) but I couldn’t help myself on Saturday night yelling out, time after time, as the Waratahs put in brain-dead kicks: ‘No. Noooooo. Don’t kick it!’

My guess is that if a Wallabies side were selected right now that Cooper would be the starting number 10, with Matt Giteau (who is still to show real sharpness) at inside centre. This leaves Barnes – correctly – on the outer, until he gets his running and passing game going.

Of course, Cooper is being fed by Will Genia who looks like being the next long-term Wallaby halfback. In fact, I reckon by the end of his career, depending on injuries and so on, that Genia will be bracketed in the company of Des Connor, Ken Catchpole and John Hipwell as Australia’s greatest halfbacks.

Genia’s long, sweeping one-motion pass from the ground, his decisiveness in running and his defensive game, the way he rounds up kicks and makes  hard-shouldered tackles, should be a lesson to Luke Burgess, who is everything Genia isn’t.

Now the Reds have to learn to string wins together. They haven’t won back-to-back wins for several years. On Sunday they play the Western Force at Brisbane. Surely they will defeat a side that is a one-man band on attack, with that man, James O’Connor still being a teenager.

The ACT Brumbies did what they had to do to beat a valiant but limited Lions side. But they are, along with the Western Force, the only side in the tournament yet to score a bonus point.

The Bulls (with a game in hand) are leading the tournament with three wins and three bonus points. The Chiefs, the Hurricanes, and the Crusaders have, like the Brumbies, won three games. But, unlike the Brumbies, all these teams have recorded two bonus points each.

Why the Brumbies can’t achieve bonus points suggests a lack of direction, in the Cooper manner, in the backline. I would point the finger, too, at Josh Valentine who seems to have succumbed to an attack of the Burgesses, the symptoms of which are a tendency to stand over the ball at rucks, even when it is out, as if it were a time bomb that is going to explode if anyone touches it.

The other general point that emerged from the round, is that now we are into it’s fifth round the hard travelling is beginning to wreck a harsh toll on teams going to and coming back from South Africa.

The Chiefs, for instance, started brilliantly against the Reds with three tries in the first 20 minutes, and then their legs went and they couldn’t summon up the energy to stop the Reds comeback. The Chiefs, too, are rightly furious that they played on a Friday night rather than a Saturday or a Sunday (as the Reds are next week).

The Waratahs also started brightly before hitting the energy (or lack of energy) wall. Hopefully they should be able to emulate the first 40 minutes or so of their play against the Bulls against a Lions side that is all heart and little skill.

The Hurricanes who played in Wellington two weekends ago against the Lions also started well against the Cheetahs before their energy levels dropped. They were also playing at altitude which intensified the agony of the exhaustion they suffered.

We’ll get a better idea of how valid this theory is, though, when the Hurricanes play the impressive Stormers at Cape Town. They will be acclimatised. If they have any pretensions to being a finals side they should come away with a victory. That’s a big ‘if,’ of course.

But after a series of results that decimated my tips on The Roar, I am searching for a theory, any theory, that can explain why I got most of the winners wrong in the last round.

I’m backing the Reds and Quade Cooper next week. Surely it’s time the back-to-back winning hoodoo is broken by the Reds?

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