bugger. its locked.
general gist?? Souths crowds up and crowds up when he plays away too?
Here you go, today's Courier Mail online
"LAST week a Sydney rugby writer took the long handle to the Queensland Reds.
Nothing he wrote was untrue. Money is tight, crowds aren’t great and the Reds won’t make the Super Rugby play-offs — although after upsetting the Rebels last weekend they could now end the season with six wins — a 50 per cent improvement on last year.
And yes, as he says, Queensland Rugby is in the ridiculous situation of having to pay Quade Cooper and Karmichael Hunt hundreds of thousands of dollars to play club rugby for Souths.
Now the jury is still very much out, so to speak, on the rights and wrongs of the Hunt case, but I take a different tack on Cooper.
True, the $325,000 component of QC (Quade Cooper)’s $650,000 annual salary that the Reds are up for is an awful lot of money, but it’s not completely wasted.
In fact, Brisbane clubs might argue it is the best dough the QRU has spent for years.
A couple of weeks ago I was at a barbecue and people were talking about going to watch their local club rugby team in action against Souths.
Not that anyone mentioned Souths. They all said they were, “going to watch Quade Cooper”.
It is the same every week. I understand Brothers Rugby Club officials were devastated recently when Souths informed them during the week that Cooper was injured and wouldn’t be playing against them. For weeks they had been selling corporate tents for “Quade Cooper Day”.
Even so, a lot of people didn’t get the memo and the crowd was still massive in anticipation of the QC (Quade Cooper) Show.
As one rugby official told me yesterday, “he’s selling a lot of cans of beer”.
And that’s no small thing. With so much money being spent by the ARU and state unions to keep Super Rugby afloat, there isn’t a lot left over for the grassroots. The clubs have to use creative marketing to make a buck and get people along to their grounds.
Right now Cooper is the best thing they’ve got going for them — and no-one is cashing in more than Souths.
Not that it’s just about money for them. The one-time wild child of Australian rugby is proving to be an outstanding captain on and off the field.
He’s leading the way at training, hangs around after games until the last autograph and selfie, makes a speech to congratulate every player who makes his first-grade debut — the kind of things that used to happen in club rugby.
Interest in the Brisbane club scene is the strongest it has been for years, so much so that Fox has started replaying the Saturday match of the day on Wednesday nights and as from this week Triple M has come on board as sponsor.
The first game under the new sponsorship deal will be shown tomorrow week. GPS versus Quade Cooper … er, I mean Souths."
