Rugby: A final push from Cooper's Canes

Colin Cooper. Photo / Getty Images

Departing coach can be proud of his playoff record over seven seasons

In a quiet moment this week, Colin Cooper could have been forgiven for feeling a little nostalgic.

After eight years at the helm of the good, but not quite great, ship Hurricanes, he faces potentially the last 80 minutes of his tenure. Time for a spot of reflection, perhaps?

"I haven't really gone there because I don't want to get caught up in emotion," Cooper said. "I've just got to focus on the Waratahs. I'll probably do that when I find out where we are."

Which is a curious way of saying, whether they win (in the playoffs) or lose (clear your desk).

"Hopefully after this there'll be two more [matches]. We're pretty much focused on what we can control and that's to do what we can to beat the Waratahs."

That's a typical rugby response. Don't let emotion, or any sort of introspection, get in the way of dampening down a human interest angle.

But he does have a point. Tonight in Sydney, the Hurricanes are playing for their place in the Super 14 semifinals against an impressive Waratahs team who have not lost in that city all year. The Australians have an appropriate term for this sort of scenario: "Sydney or the bush."

In some ways the lack of ambiguity around tonight's game suits Cooper and the Hurricanes. After their near-terminal mid-season decline, where they lost to four South African teams on the bounce, the Hurricanes have gone on a tear. It started with a drawn game they should have won against the Crusaders, then traversed two gutsy victories away at the Brumbies and the Highlanders, a scratchy home win against the Chiefs and last week's blockbuster with the Reds.

Encouragingly, it was probably only in the last 40 minutes against the Queenslanders that the Hurricanes played anywhere near their true potential.

"If we'd lost one of those last four games we were out, we had no show, but we kept winning and picked up the odd bonus point along the way," Cooper said. "I'm really proud of the way they've adapted to the discipline at ruck time and the way they've kept fighting.

"We're one win away from making the semifinals - I'm really proud of this group."

Cooper, in his eight-year reign, has plenty to be proud of. He might never have brought the silverware back to the Cake Tin, but he has made the playoffs four of the seven seasons he has spent in the capital and made the infamous fog final in 2006.

No, it doesn't really compare with the Crusaders era of dominance, with seven gleaming trophies in 14 years, or the Brumbies and the Bulls, or the Blues for that matter, who have three title-winning years among the dross.

Stormers captain Schalk Burger last month talked about the "perennial underachievers" tag that haunted his side. It is a cloak the Hurricanes wear well too, but first put it in perspective: in the five years before Cooper took over in the capital, the Hurricanes finished ninth, ninth, eighth, 10th and eighth. In other words it was a failing franchise, no different in many respects to how we now view the Highlanders.

But perhaps what he is most proud of is what he will leave behind for Mark Hammett, a man he coached while assistant to Robbie Deans at the Crusaders.

Cooper believes the "Courtenay Place culture" that existed at the Hurricanes has been, if not eliminated, then heavily diluted.

Many of his squad are now family men and that's something he can relate to: it's family that has drawn Cooper back to his roots in Taranaki, where he'll coach the amber and blacks in the NPC.

Win three more games on the bounce and he'll be heading north with a title few would begrudge him.

WARATAHS V HURRICANES
Sydney: Friday, 9.40pm, SS1

COOPER'S CANES
2010: ?
2009: 3rd
2008: 4th
2007: 8th
2006: 8th
2005: 4th
2004: 11th
2003: 3rd