Rugby: Phil Gifford - Wallabies with Quade Cooper seem destined for disaster

OPINION:

You're the Wallabies playing South Africa on Sunday.

The most realistic summation of how things just went for you against the All Blacks came from your best back, halfback Tate McDermott. He said "we're pretty soft."

South Africa have big ball-running forwards, who are basically cinder blocks in boots. They especially like to run the channels close to the breakdowns and scrums.

So you pick Quade Cooper at first-five?

In what universe does that make sense?

Quade Cooper is back for the Wallabies. Photo / Getty

Consider that Cooper hasn't played test rugby for four years. That in 2018 his struggles on defence were cited by Reds coach Brad Thorn as a key factor in dropping Cooper from the Reds' squad. That Cooper's penchant for being the invisible man in a defensive line was ruthlessly exploited way back by the 2011 All Blacks in their World Cup semifinal win over Australia.

There was the possibility of fielding hard-edged Reece Hodge at first-five. But coach Dave Rennie has surely signalled that Cooper, who can be brilliant with the ball in hand (as one cynical Australian journalist muttered to me at the '11 semifinal, "Yeah, he floats like a butterfly, pity he stings like a butterfly too."), will lead an all-out running offence, in the hope the South African giants run out of oxygen.

If that's the plan, the Springboks-Wallabies game will either be the most exciting upset since Japan beat South Africa at the 2015 World Cup, or a one-way traffic trainwreck.

Certainly struggling first-five Noah Lolesio had to go. And perhaps Rennie needs to look closely at his coaching lineup too.

There were four restarts in the first half of last week's belting by the All Blacks. Every time Lolesio kicked so deep it was like a relaxed training session for the All Blacks, who had huge amounts of time to clear the ball with ease.

Given that every waterboy and first aid person at a test is wired up like an air traffic controller either (a) somebody in the Australian coaching box wasn't telling Lolesio to kick higher and shorter to let his chasers put some pressure on or (b) he was told to change his kick-offs but wasn't able to do so. There's no question Lolesio has talent - but not enough to control a test backline.

Which brings us back to Cooper. If you've ever seen him in a boxing ring there's no question about the man's courage. His tackling limitations are therefore something of a mystery.

But one thing does feel more certain. If defence was a shaky area for him in his 20s, nobody in the game would suggest that in his 30s a couple of seasons in the relatively relaxed arena of Japanese club rugby will have sharpened things up.

All Blacks Halfback Aaron Smith is caught in a head high tackle by Quade Cooper during the rugby test match between the All Blacks and Australia in 2015. Photo / Getty Images.

If the press release from Sanzaar about Jordie Barrett had been brutally honest, the heading would have been: "Referee and Television Match Official got it completely wrong."

Sanzaar's judicial panel didn't equivocate. Barrett's action which saw the sole of his boot collide with Marika Koroibete's face, the three South African panel members decided, wasn't intentional or reckless.

In the least noted but, to me the most significant, phrase in the decision they said "the red card is expunged from the player's record."

I don't know that there's ever been such a clear exoneration of a player who's been red carded.

But it was almost hidden in the fineprint, and seems to have been largely ignored in media reports here. Two local stories about the decision were headed "Barrett escapes ban" as if somehow he'd tunnelled his way out of Paremoremo.

One commentator even made a ludicrous comparison to the red card dished out to a Swedish player in the European football championship, as if somehow you could draw a fair comparison with a ground-level, sliding, football tackle, to what happened to a rugby player suspended in mid-air.

In the name of fairness and full disclosure, I was one who looked for a fence to perch on. The visuals were so bad and -not being a biomechanics expert - while I was convinced it was an accident, I thought Barrett had been careless.

My excuse for not being so sure at the time, and why I don't blame the match officials for getting it wrong, is that we didn't have the benefit, as the Sanzaar panel did, of two people who are experts in biomechanics.

What was described in often vindictive terms on social media, as Barrett "kicking out", was actually, they agreed, the body's natural reaction when someone is off balance in the air, and facing potentially serious injuries from a nasty landing.

So no, Barrett doesn't need to modify his technique. In fact the only way to ensure such an horrific looking incident doesn't happen again would be to make it compulsory, as it will be in kids' rugby next year, to stay grounded while waiting for the high ball.

Given that the aerial skills of people like Jordie Barrett, his brother Beauden, and Damian McKenzie, provide some of the most exciting moments in the professional game, it seems more likely that what happened in Perth will be regarded as the freak accident it was, and the game will move on as if it never happened.