The Off White Card was fortunate enough to be given a copy of the letter the ARU have sent to Quade regarding his social media outbursts.
Dear Quade
RE: Your comments in social media
Firstly, thank you for letting us know you were unhappy last week. As you know we are always looking for feedback, and we welcome constructive criticism. I have released a public statement to let everyone know that I won’t be making any public statements. After this one. At this stage. Here it is in full:
STATEMENT FROM AUSTRALIAN RUGBY UNION REGARDING QUADE COOPER
Australian Rugby Union has written to Quade Cooper in relation to social media comments.
However, ARU has no intention of conducting those discussions with Quade in the public arena.
To that end, we will be making no further comment at this stage.
(Ironically that statement is so short I probably could have tweeted it from the Wallabies account. #YOLO)
May I state for the record that we will not be addressing your comments through our social media channels because it is undignified and unnecessary. Note that our reasoning has nothing to do with you having more than half a million followers compared to our 36 thousand-odd followers. That your followers outnumber ours 15-fold is just a coincidence.
You may be surprised that we are only addressing your social media (twitter) comments, especially when your comments to Phil Lutton in the Brisbane Times would have appeared, to a casual observer at least, much more inflammatory, derogatory, and indeed damaging to the team and the code. But we feel that your oft-quoted four tweets related to the direction of Australian rugby were much worse than what you said in mainstream media.
We are more upset by you answering a question posed by a follower that you weren’t going to play rugby league (but that you would like to play with Sonny Bill) than we are when you told a journalist that the Wallabies play a boring game and if they want to continue to do so, not to pick you
We were not amused that you reiterated your desire to play alongside one of your best friends, without stating firm plans to do so. We are, however, fine with you insinuating that you felt stifled by the current Wallabies game plan to a journalist
We were upset that you replied to a follower that you were just a player and your job was to strive for greatness. However when you told a journalist that our boring style of play was driving fans away from the game towards more attractive options in a crowded sporting marketplace, well, that was also fine with us.
When you told someone you were allowed to play attacking rugby from February to May it was almost as if you were telling them that the Reds scored more tries than the Wallabies, which is obviously crazy. Perhaps next time you can tell someone that you made mistakes in a test match in an attempt to put yourself in a winning position rather than being happy with a close loss.
As you can see, surprisingly and somewhat illogically, it is your four twitter posts that we feel have done the most damage to our brand. Not the quotes given to a journalist whose article was picked up by media organisations across all rugby-playing nations in the world, and whose article was tweeted widely with sensationalist headlines indicating your shift to rugby league was imminent. Not that one. Your tweets, ok?
From here, with the exception of your appearance on The Rugby Club tonight, we’ll keep these matters out of the public eye, and continue to send letters.
Yours sincerely
The people who haven’t decided if they’re going to top-up your Reds contract for next year yetARU Protocols Officer
We don’t know what to make of it, what do you think?
