Rugby is a tough game played by hard athletes but its true powerbase isn’t muscle. Rather it is twinkling toes and magic hands that puts points on the scoreboard and gets bums on seats. It’s why the heart of every great team is a playmaker – someone who makes things happen, a creative genius who can execute basic skills brilliantly and also conjure the extraordinary.
A cut-out ball that hits a player on the fly, the popped pass to a raging bull on a crazy angle, a flick or feint, a dummy or double-pump. Hands, eyes, imagination in a harmony of havoc. Such moments ignite teams, electrify a crowd and create an alchemy that leads to success. It’s what Eddie Jones is searching for.
With the first Test of winter under two months away and a further two until the Rugby World Cup kicks off, three clear front-runners have emerged: Quade Cooper, Carter Gordon and Noah Lolesio. All three were in action last weekend and each playmaker showed moments of flair, daring, instinct and ruthlessness that would have had Jones rubbing his hands in glee.
Gordon and Lolesio faced off for the first time in the Brumbies-Rebels match in Melbourne. Ten months ago, Lolesio was the boy wonder after leading a 13-man Wallabies to victory over England in the first Test in Perth. But the 22-year-old fell from favour under former coach Dave Rennie and ended the season in exile. On Saturday, fresh from being snubbed by Jones for April’s Wallabies training camp, he was as angry as a bulldog chewing a wasp.
Lolesio channelled his vengeance into fast hands, hard running and controlled aggression, standing defiantly flat and scoring twice to get his Brumbies the win. After his second try, he jumped up, found the sideline camera and growled: “Carter Gordon!” It was a riposte to the coach and a challenge to his new rival. “It’s a bit personal, this game,” Lolesio admitted later.
Gordon too knows it’s got to be personal to matter. Three years ago, age 19, he and brother Mason threw all they owned into a car and drove from Brisbane to Melbourne to trial for the Rebels. For a time Carter mislaid his mojo and was lost. This year, he has picked up Lolesio’s gauntlet with gusto.
Gordon isn’t the prettiest player. He’s not the fastest or strongest. But he’s fearless, mad and smart. Twice against the Brumbies he scythed sublime left-right cut-out passes into the hands of his winger to score. Even when crumpled by a Tamati Tua crash tackle, Gordon bounced up with a bloody grin. “He’s always in the fight,” Jones said. “He’s never beaten.”
The Rebels and Brumbies 10s meet again on 2 June in a final duel before Jones selects his Wallabies side for the Tests against South Africa on 8 July and Argentina on 15 July. Will Carter or Lolesio win selection? Could both have a role to play, as starter and finisher? Perhaps the likeliest scenario is that both are being groomed to apprentice an old master.
Quade Santini Cooper has, for 15 years, been the most mercurial figure in Australian rugby. Born in New Zealand, raised in Australia, criticised and canonised in equal measure across two countries, two decades and 76 Tests, Cooper’s life has been played in the twilight zone. But he is a playmaker, a maverick and a sorcerer, and his crowning glory may now be nigh.
Currently he’s in Japan, having been to hell and back recovering from a ruptured achilles. Last weekend, Cooper, now 35, made his comeback after nine months out, inspiring his side Kintetsu, who had won one game all season, to a 36-14 victory over previously unbeaten Urayasu. He did it with sleight of hand, speed of foot and a beautifully dangerous mind.
This is the effect Cooper has. The last time he was recalled from Japan to play for Australia was in 2021. Then, after a 1,541-day exile, he scored 23 of the team’s 28 points - including eight from eight goals, the last a 43-metre kick to sink the Springboks 28-26 after the siren - the first of five straight wins in which he took the Wallabies from seventh to third in the world.
Cooper has rehabilitated his mind in Japan too and is now so zen he’s lethal. “The goal is progress not perfection,” he wrote this week. And he’s right. Jones has vowed to “smash and grab” this World Cup with fast, fierce, quick-kill rugby. If so, Cooper is the key. In the last six Tests where he ran out, Australia won. Win six at the World Cup and a place in the final awaits.
With Lolesio and Carter his disciples, Cooper can be the Wallabies greatest weapon. “It’s the small actions that lead to big victories,” he said at the weekend. It was both a credo for a World Cup campaign and the catchphrase of a classic playmaker, waving his hands and twinkling his toes while plotting victory with the most important muscle of all.
