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“I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.” – Adlai E. Stevenson.
It was 2008, on a quiet side park next to Adelaide Oval, and the Australian team had finished their final training session before the Adelaide Sevens.
A not-quite 18-year-old kid nicknamed ‘Rabbit’ was shyly demonstrating the range of steps in his arsenal to one of the team managers standing on the sidelines.
If there was space on the outside, James O’Connor said, he used Step A. If the space was on the inside, Step B. If he was in space and the sweeper was coming up fast, Step C. And so on, through to about Step E or F.
Watching his quicksilver feet and his incredible balance, it wasn’t hard to get excited.
After all, the same kid had won over one of the toughest crowds in world rugby when he dazzled the Hong Kong audience the week before, scoring a try against South Africa, and at one stage standing up the legendary Springbok Sevens star Fabian Juries.
The Hong Kong audience knew they were looking at something special.
The Waratahs crowds of 2008 knew the same, watching Kurtley Beale play his first full season of Super Rugby, particularly when the Waratahs lost the final to the Crusaders 20-12.
Beale played every match in the run to the final, an astounding achievement for a 19-year-old, even one with three years of Australian schoolboys tours under his belt. Steering a senior team at flyhalf, a notoriously difficult position for a young player, simply added gloss to the burgeoning reputation, and of course led to inevitable comparisons with the genius of Mark Ella.
Another player being compared to Ella was the freewheeling Quade Cooper, awarded a Wallaby tour in 2008, most likely at the expense of Beale when it became evident that Cooper was still eligible for New Zealand.
Cooper proved his worth though, rising above his bro-cut mullet on Test debut to slice through the Italian defence and put a beleaguered Australian side ahead by 25-20. It was to be the first of many astounding moves by Cooper for both the Reds and Australia,t as he twisted opponents inside out with footwork not seen since the glory days of Carlos Spencer.
Time passed and the Amigos didn’t just hold up an end, they dominated – winning important matches for the Wallabies.
Cooper scored his winning try on debut against Italy in 2008, when it seemed the Azzuri were destined for an historic breakthrough.
O’Connor not only scored the equalising try in a dead-rubber Hong Kong Bledisloe Test in 2010, but also iced the tricky goal from the tram tracks to win the match and end a 15-match winning streak by the All Blacks.
(Unfortunately Cooper couldn’t contain himself, shoving Richie McCaw in the head during the try celebrations.)
And Beale ended years of Australian disappointment on the highveld when he slammed over a 55-metre penalty goal on full time to end South Africa’s hopes at Bloemfontein in 2010.
The Amigos were flying high, but a dark underbelly was becoming evident.
Cooper was facing burglary charges from a 2009 incident involving the theft of two laptop computers.
Allegations would later surface that O’Connor was the third man into a brawl between Cooper and Beale as they fought in Paris later on the 2010 Wallaby tour.
On the Monday following the Australia-Ireland Test in 2010, Cooper appeared in the Brisbane Magistrates Court and was fined $400 and disqualified from driving for six months for driving on a suspended licence.
For his part, Beale had also been fined $5000 for urinating outside a Brisbane nightclub.
A hungover O’Connor incredibly went missing during the announcements for the 2011 Rugby World Cup squad – a sheepish Australian squad filing out of a Qantas jumbo, while viewers waited for the sight of wunderkind O’Connor, only to realise that he wasn’t coming. O’Connor was later suspended and fined $10,000.
During the Cup itself, Cooper quailed under pressure against South Africa, before an utterly forgettable performance against a rampant All Black team and a New Zealand crowd who hadn’t forgotten his disrespect to captain McCaw in 2010.
Beale, meanwhile, went into overdrive, assaulting a bouncer in 2012, getting fined $40,000 for a brawl with Gareth Delve and Cooper Vuna at the Rebels in 2013, before being sanctioned for breaching an alcohol ban and eventually being photographed with O’Connor at 3:50am at a fast-food joint just days before a critical Lions Test.
O’Connor wasn’t settling down either in 2013. Following a lacerated liver which almost proved fatal, O’Connor was sacked by the Rebels and was suddenly marooned without a Super Rugby club – the only Wallaby in history to be unwanted by a province.
In the final act, a drunken O’Connor was removed from Perth airport by security, had his ARU contract torn up and was forced to go offshore for rugby employment.
With O’Connor exiled, Cooper out for the season with a shoulder injury, and Beale hanging on by the most slender of threads to his ARU contract while embroiled in the Di Patston disaster, it seemed that the Amigos soap opera was finally over. Wasted talent was the popular opinion.
Putting aside the behavioural issues (no mean feat indeed), there have probably been no three players of such prodigious ability together in a Wallaby side ever. David Campese and Mark Ella, certainly; Ken Catchpole and Phil Hawthorne, perhaps; but three bona-fide matchwinners under one roof – incredible when you look back on it.
The good news? Talent of this magnitude does not evaporate. Genuine geniuses (say that five times fast) are always so, it is mostly only circumstance that changes. Their joy in their talents waxes and wanes, and often their on-field magic is the escape from an increasingly hostile world outside, but the talent is always there.
The reality is that World Cups are mostly won with moments of individual brilliance. Jonny Wilkinson. David Campese. Steven Larkham. In the Amigos, Australia has a triple threat, if only they could be broken to lead, like a wild horse.
The signs are good. O’Connor came back from his Europe sojourn heavily praised by all and sundry for his attitude and application. Cooper has studiously and diligently rehabilitated himself from back-to-back injuries and shows signs of his best under the old-school direction of the former bouncer John Connolly.
Beale is yet to hit his straps, but has the backing of Wallaby coach Michael Cheika, and is well known as a player who is at his best when he is playing rugby and is fit. It is no surprise that the schoolboy Beale thrived under the discipline of the Marist Brothers at St Joseph’s, but lost his way in the player-led Robbie Deans era. Cheika is more Joeys than Deans, and has shown that he can get the best from Beale.
All three players have had their chances and must be privately aghast at the realisation that this could very well be their last World Cup. All will be 30, or almost, by the time 2019 rolls around, and they know that for every Brian O’Driscoll who keeps his edge to 33 or 34, there are a dozen who lose the spark by 28, never to regain it.
The Amigos must sense the time is now. Seniority has a strange way of creeping up on a player. One day he is carting around Wally the Wallaby, and the next he is behind the goal-line with 14 sets of eyes on him, looking for guidance. Wayward as they may have been, the Amigos are herd animals, not loners, and eventually the herd will embrace them and look to them for guidance.
They are not without something to offer. Mercurial talent goes without saying, but there is something more. Beale has been under pressure since his teens and was running the show for a finals team at 19. For every moment of madness, there has been a moment of brilliance, a showstopper. He wants to be liked, wants to do well, and is popular.
Cooper has been hunted by the All Blacks, humiliated by the crowd, injured several times, seen the highs of a Reds Super Rugby title and barely two years later the lows of a series of thrashings. His game management has blossomed, and tempered his crazy-brave brilliance.
O’Connor remains an enigma, but at least one who has learned how hard it can be at the bottom. From the stratosphere at Toulon to the cellar at the Reds, O’Connor has bitten his tongue and bided his time. There is no suggestion that he has done anything other than work hard and try hard. There have been moments, and there have been moments. But talent endures, and the magic 17-year-old who befuddled Fabian Juries in Hong Kong is still in there.
It is a tantalising question. Could the Amigos be the keystone of an audacious Wallabies tilt at the 2015 World Cup? The fans are an unforgiving lot, but they’re also suckers for redemption. And in reality, it just couldn’t get better than this. The three idiots who chucked away their talent and blew their ride, re-appearing as leaders to carry Australia deep into the World Cup finals.
Sometimes all it takes is the right leader and the right environment.
Muhammad Ali was once hated, outcast and looked to be finished, before he was matched up with the modern day Goliath in George Foreman, and won a career-defining fight.
Ali mused before the contest, “I’m better now than I was when you saw that 22 years old undeveloped kid running from Sonny Liston. I’m experienced now, professional. Jaw’s been broke, been knocked down a couple of times… I’m baaad.”
The Amigos? They too are experienced, professional. They’ve been knocked down. Their jaw’s been broke. And they’re still bad – bad enough to lead Australia to a World Cup final at least.
You heard it here first.