RUCK STAR

QUADE COOPER COULD HAVE BEEN DREAMING.THE WALLABIES WERE DOWN BY TWO AGAINST SOUTH AFRICA IN LAST YEAR’S RUGBY CHAMPIONSHIP. TIME HAD RUN OUT AND COOPER, RECALLED TO THE TEAM AFTER FOUR YEARS IN THE WILDERNESS, HAD THE CHANCE TO TAKE THE PENALTY KICK TO WIN THE GAME.

In the childhood fantasies Cooper rehearsed in his backyard in Tokoroa in New Zealand back in the mid ’90s, he never hesitated to take the kick, calmly slotting the ball through the uprights before embracing his imaginary teammates and basking in the adulation of the crowd. Even earlier in his career, Cooper wouldn’t have thought twice about it.

But on this night, he paused, performing what he calls an “ego check” as he carefully evaluated whether he was, in fact, the right man for the job. He was seven from seven on penalty kicks that night, but his last kick, from 40 metres out, had only just scraped over the crossbar. This one was from roughly the same spot. “I was like, wow, that’s right on my border, ” says Cooper, who’s back in Australia to get treatment for a hand injury before returning to Japan to play for his club side, Kintetsu Liners. “And so that was a great lesson for me. This is a game-defining kick. From an ego point of view, of course you want to take it. You dream of those moments. The first thing I asked myself was, ‘Am I the best guy to take it?’ And I was like, I’m going to ask Hodgey, because I know Reece, he practises all his kicks from 40 back. So I spoke to Hodgey and we basically came to the conclusion that I was in the zone.”

For a man whose career has often seemed burdened by the weight of his freakish talents and the pressure to do justice to them,