SPIRO: Just let Quade Cooper leave Australia and the Wallabies!

It’s time for Australian rugby to cut Quade Cooper loose. Let him go to Toulon on the big dollars, as his manager Khoder Nasser says he is advising him to do.

And let Australian rugby get on with the 2015 Rugby World Cup campaign, the Olympics Sevens Rugby tournament in Rio, next year’s expanded Super Rugby tournament and much-needed rebuilding of the Reds franchise.

I am tempted to say, too, good riddance to Cooper after everything he has put Australian rugby through, from the repeated and contemptuous (on his part) bargaining for more money, from his obnoxious behaviour on and off the field, his trashing of the Wallabies culture and his failure to deliver for the Wallabies in Rugby World Cup 2011.

There is something none of us can take away from him, and that is his terrific play for the Reds in 2011 which, virtually single-handedly, won the Super Rugby tournament for his franchise, the first win in their history.

But for the rest of it, aside from an occasional bit of brilliance for the Wallabies, like his debut try against Italy to win a Test, he flattered to deceive in most of the Tests he played and especially in the Tests against the All Blacks and the Springboks.

Compare his career with that of, say, Dan Carter. In some ways, Cooper had more innate rugby talents than Carter. But he lacked the most important attributes that go towards making a champion. He was selfish rather than selfless. You always had the feeling with Cooper that he was playing for himself, rather than for the team, on and off the field.

His contemptuous attitude to the Wallaby jersey was also in complete contrast to that of Carter. Where Cooper found the Wallaby culture “toxic,” Carter tweeted on Sunday how he loved being selected in the 41-man All Blacks squad to compete in the coming Tests.

This latest round of negotiations between Cooper and the Reds and the ARU are a case in point where he exhibited his contempt for Australian rugby and an obsessive pursuit, undoubtedly spurred on by his manager, Khoder Nasser, of getting more money than he is worth from Australian rugby.

Even now, when the Reds franchise has finally reached the end of their tolerance for their star, Nasser is rabbiting on about the possibility of Cooper playing for the Australian Sevens side at the Rio Olympics.

Sevens rugby is as much about tackling as it is about running and passing. I can’t see someone like Julian Savea, a potential New Zealand Sevens player at Rio, being in fear and trembling about having to run at and through Cooper.

Compare Cooper’s juvenile, grasping behaviour with that of Michael Hooper. The champion flanker says his decision to extend his contrast with the ARU and the Waratahs from 2016 until the end of 2018 is a “no-brainer.”

He wants to continue his career under the coaching of Michael Cheika as the Wallabies coach and Daryl Gibson, the coach from next year of the Waratahs. In other words, the jerseys matter most to him right now.

Stephen Moore, who should be named as the Wallabies captain for the 2015 Rugby World Cup campaign, said it all when he renewed with Australian rugby by saying that “doing anything other than playing than” playing in Australia “wasn’t on the cards.”

Again, the jersey is the motivation rather than the money.

Quade Cooper playing against Scotland (AP Photo/Scott Heppell)

And this has been the template for a generation of New Zealand greats who are retiring from New Zealand rugby after the 2015 Rugby World Cup tournament: Tony Woodcock, Keven Mealamu, Conrad Smith, Richie McCaw, Dan Carter.

This handful of players are among the greatest in their positions to have played for the All Blacks. They were the leaders of the All Blacks side that won the 2011 Rugby World Cup tournament.

Probably only Conrad Smith would be picked for the All Blacks in 2016, and even then there would be pressure from the likes of Malakai Fekitoa. But right now, in 2015, these players are crucial members of an All Blacks squad that is looking for back-to-back Rugby World Cup victories.

It is to the credit of all these players that they played on in New Zealand after the 2011 Rugby World Cup victory to give themselves a chance of being part of the 2015 Rugby World Cup campaign.

Players like Sam Cane and Wyatt Crockett have signed on for more years in New Zealand rugby. “I am really enjoying my rugby and love playing for the Chiefs and the All Blacks,” Cane told reporters. Love, there is that word again.

In fact, Charles Piutau is the only All Black with strong prospects of playing in the Rugby World Cup 2019 tournament in Japan who has defected for the money to an overseas club.

And guess what? Waiseke Naholo has emerged, and it is entirely possible that the formerly indispensable Piutau, who was going to be a leader in the Rugby World Cup 2019 campaign, has become entirely dispensable.

Some statistics provided on The Roar by Jack O’Toole indicate that 16 members of the 2011 All Blacks left to play overseas, with Jerome Kaino coming back from Japan after two years to be available for the 2015 Rugby World Cup tournament campaign.

The Wallabies lost only eight players to overseas rugby, with James O’Connor coming back to play for Queensland this season after a stint in Europe.

What this tells me is that the policy of the ARU and New Zealand Rugby Union not to select players from out of their countries for has worked.

All the greats of New Zealand rugby stayed on after Rugby World Cup 2011. And there are only two players, in my opinion, who left the Wallabies between 2011 and 2015 who should be candidates for the 2015 Rugby World Cup squad: Kane Douglas and Drew Mitchell.

Players like Will Genia, Wycliff Palu, James Horwill and Scott Higginbotham are leaving Australian rugby at the end of the year. Good luck to them. They have served Australian rugby well. All of them, with the exception of Higginbotham (in my opinion), are out of contention for the Wallabies in 2016.

Recently, however, the ARU brought in a new rule that players had to be in Australia to qualify for the Wallabies unless they came in under the 7/60 dispensation, seven years in the Wallabies jersey and 60 Tests played.

The new rule has been called a masterstroke. But I am not so sure about this. I think that this 7/60 dispensation should only be used for Rugby World Cup years. In the other three years, the Wallabies should be selected from the best of the players playing here.

There are a number of reasons behind this thinking. First, the players in Australia should get preference for Wallabies selection, as players in New Zealand do for the All Blacks. This will mean, in turn, that the national selector, through the franchise coaches, can have some input into the game of the local players.

Second, it seems to me that players in Europe do not improve on their play there. Take the case of James O’Connor. He came back to the Reds this season with glowing talk about how he had improved as a player on and off the field during his stint in Europe.

It was all talk, though. On the field, though, O’Connor’s play for the Reds has been mediocre.

And take the play of all the Springbok stars who have left South Africa to play in Europe in the last few years. How many of them of Bryan Habana, Morne Steyn, Ruan Pienaar, Francois Lowe, Guthro Steenkamp and Fourie du Preez have improved in their play?

The Springboks have won only 14 of their last 51 Tests against the All Blacks.

And this year there is no South African side in the Super Rugby semi-finals for the first time since 2003, a year when the Springboks were beaten by 20 points by the All Blacks in the quarter-final of the 2003 Rugby World Cup tournament.

Meanwhile, New Zealand rugby has extremely successful in world rugby at all the levels, especially in the Bledisloe Cup Tests and The Rugby Championship.

As Mark Keohane, the acerbic South African rugby writer, noted recently, “South Africans tend to remember the rare wins against the All Blacks by the Springboks and New Zealanders remember the rare losses of the All Blacks to the Springboks.”

Earlier this year Stephen Tew, the chief executive of the New Zealand Rugby Union, defended the policy of selecting All Blacks from players who played in New Zealand on the grounds of the success the All Blacks and also on the demonstration effect these great players had on those younger, aspiring players within their franchises.

The fact that McCaw and Carter, arguably two of the greatest players in the history of rugby, have remained in New Zealand and at the Crusaders franchise for the greatest years of their career has meant that a several generations of Crusaders and All Blacks have had the benefit of their advice and their example.

As Tew said, this example has been pure gold for New Zealand rugby on and off the field.

This brings us back to Quade Cooper. He apparently needs seven Tests this season to qualify for the Wallabies under the 7/60 rule.

Michael Cheika will be under enormous pressure from the Red-eyed journalist fan club to allow their man to achieve this. But Cheika should resist this pressure.

Right now, Cooper is well behind Bernard Foley, Matt Toomua and Christian Lealiifano as the Wallaby number 10. He is behind Kurtley Beale as a utility who can play number 10, inside centre or fullback.

The future of Australian rugby does not feature in Cooper’s plans. Why should Cooper’s future feature in the plans of Australian rugby?