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‘There was a little girl, Who had a little curl, Right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, She was very, very good. But when she was bad she was horrid.’
Quade Cooper was very, very good, especially in the opening 20 minutes of the exciting, incident-packed Reds – British and Irish Lions match at Suncorp Stadium played out in front of 50,136 frenzied spectators.
But when he was bad he was horrid.
On the evidence of this match, Robbie Deans is correct in not putting him in the Wallabies squad to play the first Test against the Lions.
Deans also said that if injuries come, and given the way players are going down like ninepins this is not unlikely, then he will be considered.
In my view, even with injuries to his playmakers, Deans would have been reluctant to throw Cooper to the Lions in a Test match.
This view was reinforced by Cooper’s play for the Reds against the Lions on Saturday night. His undoubted brilliance was more than overwhelmed by his penchant for making serious mistakes under pressure.
Even Tim Horan, a huge Cooper supporter, admitted when Cooper made a pop-up, no-look (how I hate this play!) pass to no one which almost led to a Lions try, that this sort of careless, carefree play had no place in Test matches.
For months now there has been a concerted campaign by the Queensland rugby authorities led by the coach of the Reds, Ewen McKenzie, and supported with endorsement articles by The Australian’s Wayne Smith (a diehard Reds supporter and Cooper advocate) for Cooper to run the Wallabies backline in the series against the Lions.
McKenzie threw a loaded dice (or what he thought was a loaded dice) into the argument by making Cooper captain, on the grounds (endorsed by Smith) that Cooper was the presiding genius and brains behind the Reds go-for-broke, high tempo and successful (in 2011) game plan.
Cooper failed as captain, however, by not having the rugby nous to change the (admittedly intoxicating) game plan of running the ball from everywhere when it started raining in the second half of the match. The rain made the ball extremely difficult to handle. The Reds started making many, many mistakes inside their own half, within kicking distance for the Lions.
The Reds scored two tries to one, but conceded 17 points to Owen Farrell’s boot.
Again, even Horan conceded that Cooper showed tactical immaturity by not getting the Reds out of their danger zone when he had opportunities to do so.
The point here is that Cooper’s control over the game plan of his team and, according to Smith, his input into creating the game plan was exposed, in part at least, as a desire to show off. Or, if you want to be nice about this, showcase all the passing and kicking tricks he possesses.
To put it bluntly, it was all about ‘Captain Magic’ Quade and only peripherally about the Reds and defeating the Lions.
To begin with, when the ball was dry and the Reds full of steam, Cooper produced a number of sensational passes that put runners into gaps.
The Reds tore into the Lions and looked like scoring time after time. But the Lions, with only 30 percent of possession were the first to score through mistakes induced by Cooper that gave away penalties.
As the game progressed and the pressure from the Lions mounted on Cooper he began to miss tackles, drop high balls and put in errant kicks.
Full credit, though, to the Reds, Cooper and coach Ewen McKenzie for taking the game to the Lions. The Reds had seven of their best players out on Wallaby duty and still managed to give the Lions a fright.
James Horwill and Liam Gill, particularly, would have made a huge difference to the outcome of the match as the Lions were able to scramble out of their difficulties by turning over rucks (which Gill would have prevented and done back to them) and with lineouts and scrums errors.
There were three lineouts close to the Lions try line early on when the Reds failed to catch and drive. Tries from any of these lineouts would have gone a long way to winning the match.
The same situation applied to the scrums as well. The Reds gave away a try, the only try the Lions scored, after winning their scrum, under pressure, on their try line.
Before the match, Robbie Deans reckoned that we’d see the ‘true colours’ of the Lions style in this match.
This probably happened because the Lions realised before and during the match that they had to play seriously and in their favoured pattern if they wanted to defeat the rampant Reds.
And the pattern they revealed was a pattern that is very familiar to the Australian rugby community. It is the pattern used by the Bulls in Super Rugby.
Like the Bulls, the Lions presented a terrific lineout and strongish scrum (although I’m not convinced about the Lions scrum yet).
They were confrontational, again like the Bulls, at the rucks, mauls and in the tackle, and like the Bulls they invariably kick high from first phase plays.
The Lions have deadly accurate sharp-shooting goal-kickers to turn mistakes within kicking distance into points.
We saw box kicks from the Lions halfback. We saw high kicks from the Lions backs. The chase was good, but not as good as the Bulls, and some of the kicking lacked pin-point accuracy.
Like the Bulls, too, the Lions were very good at making smashing-type attacks from kick returns, using their big centres and wingers to smash into and often through the Reds defence.
This smashing attack is backed up, like reinforced concrete, by an equally smashing type of defence.
The Super Rugby teams in Australia know all about this style of play. But knowing it and countering it are two entirely different things. The Lions/Bulls style is a difficult style to defeat, as the Bulls have shown this season.
But it is not a necessarily winning style if the opposition don’t make mistakes. If you catch the bombs, win your set pieces and make your tackles the Lions/Bulls style can be negated.
On one occasion against the Reds, the Lions went for 17 phases of play inside the Reds 22. The Reds held them out, reasonably easily, because the attacks were predictable one-off charges. The Reds finally won a turnover and a penalty.
The Lions/Bulls muscle-bound pattern is sometimes vulnerable to break-out attacks, as the electrifying Luke Morahan try demonstrated.
Roll the tape. The Lions kicked (yet another) high ball early on in the game. Morahan caught the ball under pressure, raced past Lions defenders, sliced into the back field and into the clear.
When challenged by fullback Stuart Hogg, Morahan chipped past him and raced through to re-gather and score a 70 metre try. The individual try of the season!
Here we have the Achilles’ heel of the Lions/Bulls pattern. If a high kick is fielded cleanly, if the catching side has got its back alignment in place and if the chase is for once lethargic or disorganised, a devastating attack can be launched.
The lesson here is that the Wallaby back three must be secure under the high ball. They must also adopt the New Zealand method of always being ready to counter off high kicks and take on the defence, rather than kick back, when the attack is on.
Now who is erratic and unsure under the high ball? Dare one say, Quade Cooper.
And who is undisciplined and unthinking (and also sometimes overwhelmingly brilliant) in the way he runs the backline from the five-eighth position? Quade Cooper.
At a media conference after the game, McKenzie made this point: “If we were a little more clinical and had a bit more experience in a few moments things might have been different.”
I would say that this is correct. And although McKenzie did not criticise his captain, it is clear that this is where the clinical thinking and play should have come from.
Let’s also be clear. Cooper playing his ‘Captain Magic’ game gave the under-strength Reds their best shot at an unlikely victory. It was thrilling stuff. You just wanted the skill and flair and bravery to take the game to the Lions to be rewarded.
But it is no way to play a Test against a side that intends to only play off the mistakes of its opponents.
The Charge of the Light Brigade at Crimea comes to mind if the ‘Captain Magic’ game is taken into a Test match. And the awed, stunned reaction of those watching from the surrounding hills as the charge galloped on to its annihilation is also relevant: “It is magnificent. But it is not war.”
Test matches, as the All Blacks’ close victory over a tough, occasionally brilliant French side on Saturday night showed, are rugby’s equivalent of war. Mistakes, rather than brilliant attacks, dictate the outcome of the contest.
‘Captain Magic’ right now makes too many mistakes to be given an early shot at the Lions in a three-Test series.