Then-ARU boss John O'Neill has entered the fray after former Wallabies playmaker Quade Cooper opened up on his hardships during the 2011 World Cup.
Former rugby boss John O'Neill has revealed he personally intervened to try to stop the crowd's persecution of Quade Cooper at the 2011 Rugby World Cup.
"I look back at it now and I wasn't ready for it," Cooper, 31, told former NRL player Isaac John's podcast"I had the expectation of 2011 [when the Reds won the Super Rugby title] of playing good football but now I had the pressure of all these guys hating me as well, and a whole country, not just the rugby public. I couldn't go anywhere. I was on the team bus and there were signs, 'I hope you break your leg, I hope you die in this game'.
"A few years later I've seen Richie in the airport and I went up to him and said, 'Sorry about that'," he said. The tensions came to the surface, Cooper claimed, after he was forced to play injured against Argentina in the Rugby Championship. He helped steer the team to a 23-19 fight back win but felt let down when coach Robbie Deans admitted he would have benched his No.10 if he'd had that option.
"I took that, and I ended up saying,' F--- you, you've just thrown me out to dry', I said, 'You're a s--- coach'. Not in those words but I basically said that. We ended up getting in a bit of an argument and that's when I got fined from the ARU, like $70,000 or something ." "[Cooper's manager Khoder Nasser] just said 'thanks mate, appreciate it, thank you'. Took that contract and we walked out of there.
The manner in which that happened appeared to hurt Cooper, but he revealed that he was able to flip his perspective with the help of good friend Sonny Bill Williams and manager Khoder Nasser."I felt really lost because I thought what do I do now? Is this the end of my career?" he said. He eventually signed a deal with the Rebels, who picked up him up at a bargain price. Cooper and Will Genia lit up the first half of Super Rugby this year before the Rebels' campaign derailed. He missed World Cup selection and signed with Kintetsu.
"I'm not sure what it's from but he's definitely successful off [the field] and that's why he wanted to do it a certain way. Not that that's right or wrong, but we were seeing it as players, there were certain things that were happening that we couldn't put up with so when we'd speak up about it...
"I walked into New Zealand for the World Cup and I've never been involved in anything like it. I couldn't walk , I couldn't go anywhere. I was on the team bus and there were signs 'I hope you break your leg, I hope you die in this game'. Things like that. I went from being well known to the most well known and the most hated. It was crazy."I didn't [handle it] and that was the thing, I had no help. I was basically ...
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