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‘Eddie had a plan’: Wallaby on ‘shock’ World Cup omission of Quade Cooper

Quade Cooper of the Wallabies talks to team mates in a huddle after losing The Rugby Championship & Bledisloe Cup match between the Australia Wallabies and the New Zealand All Blacks at Melbourne Cricket Ground on July 29, 2023 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

It was the Rugby World Cup shock that nobody saw coming. No, not the Wallabies’ record loss to Wales but instead the questionable selections that led to their disastrous pool stage exit.

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Playmaker Quade Cooper and veteran Michael Hooper were almost unanimously considered certainties for Eddie Jones’ World Cup squad.

Cooper had started two of the Wallabies’ four Tests in the all-important No. 10 jersey while Hooper had been named as one of Australia’s co-captains before The Rugby Championship.

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But exactly as reports on the morning of August 10 warned, the star duo were sensationally omitted from the squad which was named that night in Darwin.

Four-Test Wallaby Carter Gordon was the only specialist flyhalf in the squad while Ben Donaldson was named as a ‘utility’ which would see him share playmaker duties.

Gordon, then 21, unfortunately struggled during the sport’s showpiece event and was eventually replaced by Donaldson as Australia’s starting flyhalf. But the Wallabies’ sinking ship could not be salvaged.

 

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Australia were beaten by Fiji for the first time in 69 years during pool play, and the Wallabies were bested a week later 40-6 by Wales in Lyon. They crashed out of the World Cup in the pool stage for the first time ever.

More than 150 days after the squad was named, and with the memories of the Wallabies’ campaign now etched into history for the wrong reasons, Donaldson said it “would’ve been very beneficial” to have a player of “Quade’s calibre” around the squad.

“During The Rugby Championship I was doing most of my training at fullback,” Donaldson told RugbyPass. “Quade and Carter were the two 10s, I would jump in every now and then.

“For the World Cup squad I kind of thought, ‘I might be a chance here’ as a 10, 15 utility roll and Quade and Carter might just be the two 10s. That was my mindset.

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“I was still hoping to make it but I thought they’d be the two 10s… we went up to Darwin for a camp, Quade wasn’t there.

“I was definitely shocked, I’m not gonna lie. I think a lot of boys were just because he’d been around for so long – even guys like Hoops and all those guys who didn’t make it as well.

“Even if they weren’t going to play at the World Cup it probably would’ve been very beneficial to have a guy like Quade’s calibre in our position.

“Definitely was shocked and it is what it is. Eddie had a plan, (it) didn’t quite work but I definitely was shocked.

“But in saying that I was extremely grateful to be picked and have the opportunity. Looking back at it now, just grateful for the experiences that I got.”

Donaldson didn’t play a single minute during The Rugby Championship. Instead, the 24-year-old watched on as Cooper and Gordon shared the No. 10 role.

But by the end of the Wallabies’ World Cup campaign, it was Donaldson’s jersey.

After coming off the bench during Australia’s final warm-up Test against France in Paris, Donaldson started the first two World Cup matches at fullback.

While the man known as ‘Dono’ went on to start at flyhalf against Wales and Portugal, the Western Force recruit made his mark in the tournament opener against Georgia.

Donaldson showcased a brilliant eye for the sport and an abundance of pace that some didn’t know he had. The ‘utility’ scored two tries and received Player of the Match honours at Stade de France.

“Getting the nod to start that game was a little bit of a shock to myself and probably a lot of the boys in the team, to be honest,” Donaldson said.

“Playing how I played and the result and getting the win, it was a super cool moment. My family were there.

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“When you speak about that experience, it was massive for me. On the world stage, in front of 70-odd thousand people. Just knowing that I can perform at that level in front of a crowd like that gives me a lot of confidence moving forward.

“There was a lot of nerves going into that game and it definitely wasn’t easy. The boys around me probably made me look good.

“You definitely do take a lot of confidence out of games like that.”

But the campaign as a collective was a failure. There’s no denying that many expected better results from the Wallabies who were seen to be on the ‘easier’ side of the draw.

Australia beat Georgia and minnows Portugal in what were the only two results in their favour at the end of an otherwise shambolic season. They only won two from nine Tests.

Coach Eddie Jones has since resigned and penned a deal with Japan, and star wing Mark Nawaqanitawase has signed on with NRL powerhouse the Sydney Roosters from 2025. Chairman Hamish McLennan has been replaced, too.

A lot has happened in Australian rugby over the past few months. From a player’s point of view, it seemed impossible to escape the noise and disappointment of the World Cup itself.

“It was not the way or results we wanted, nor expected. Deep down we thought we’d go further in the competition and we probably should have,” he added.

“It was obviously very disappointing bowing out before the quarters… it took a couple of months, probably up until pre-season here with the Force to kind and get over that.

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“As soon as the World Cup finished we were on break for seven or eight weeks so you’re not doing any rugby, you’re just with our friends, with our partners just chilling out but that’s always lingering in the back of your mind.

“What could I have done better? What could we have done better? Because essentially we let our country down. We didn’t play the kind of footy we wanted to.

“It lingered for quite a long time but once we got back into pre-season and started training again, your mindset switched a bit.

“Trying to leave that in the past now. What’s happened, happened, as disappointing as it is.

“I took a lot of good learnings out of it. Hopefully, they can just make me a better player at the Western Force and Australia – the Wallabies – in the future.”

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4 Comments
B
Bob Marler 340 days ago

Eddie’s plan was to pick a young team who would do what he said/not challenge him and pick up on the fact that he was doing a half-arsed job while he bided his time before starting his new job lined up after the WC in Japan. Maybe if Aus got lucky and surprised at the WC (bonus) he’d have stuck around…

Where’d I put my tinfoil hat? Oh, there it is…

Eddie’s integrity is sadly questionable.

j
john 342 days ago

The chances of Ben Donaldson being selected for the Wallabies again should be zero, unless it is by a kiwi coach deliberately trying to undermine Australian rugby.

He’s not even in the top 5 number tens in Australia. The only reason he got selected was because he played for Randwick club, like Eddie Jones.

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JW 4 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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