Cooper was on the boo boys list at the time and when they announced he was leaving a selection of fans wasn't bothered.

As for Clark he hasn't even out on a primrose and blue shirt and he is planing for the NRL in 4 years time.

Look at Coopers strengths rather than his weaknesses and that should explain the difference in his performance.

Cooper was always strong in defence, he's tough, he's uncompromising.
The NRL is built on strong defence, not doing anything silly in your own half and playing the percentages.

The SL is more flowing, off the cuff, expansive and attack focused....in other words Coopers weaknesses.
The lad had iron hands which was always (imo) his biggest weakness, the amount of times he switched off in attack frustrated me. I will add I was never really a knocker of Cooper.

Theguardian article is interesting, the coaching staff there have told him to assert himself as a senior player.

Whereas here, he was a squad player, a role filler in regard to playing 13. And he was probably prop number 4 in the rotation behind moz, gaz woody and Harrison.


Was he encouraged to break that rotation ? You'd like to hope so, you'd like to think that's the aspiration for every young player. As yed says though, maybe it was his hands that limited him over here and our style

Hence 13 not being his or Harrison's best position. We could get away with it when we had Hodgson as an extra footballer but not anymore. Well certainly wouldn't have last season IMO.

In fairness he was an automatic pick for at least the last half of his last season with us, including the play off series and GF. In my opinion he is, and was always going to be a top player, he has that edge you need to succeed.

I don't by this 'iron hands' nonsense either. He had a couple of games where he came up with more than an average amount of errors, but on the whole, he was fine.

Good D, good footwork, strong go forward and a quick PTB has seen him succeed in the NRL so far. He'll kick on again too.

I agree with RLIMR tbh.

I think there was a bit of a revision of history when Cooper left to make out he wasn't that good. In his last season with us he had become a pretty good player.

As with a lot of young players, Cooper suffered from being overhyped by fans when he had not played much "Cooper is going to be the next big thing" and then when he actually started to play and establish himself in the first team he kind of got forgotten about.

He did very well to come back from his injuries and is obviously a tough character, which is why he's gone to the NRL and handled himself.

Maybe he wasn't a Sam Burgess calibre player but I think he was Paul Wood calibre, or possibly even better than Paul Wood, so he definitely deserves a high rating.