Andrew Slack: Cooper's flair and risk taking give Reds fresh impetus

Brad Thorn of the Crusaders is hit in a tackle by Anthony Faingaa of the Reds. Photo / Getty Images

Queenslanders feel it's well and truly due. After all, if you count winning trophies as the only thing that matters, then the professional era in rugby has been a completely barren one in this neck of the woods.

The last occasion a Reds captain held up a trophy was when Peter Slattery and his part-timers won the Super 10 title in 1995. At the same time, Quade Cooper was presumably running rings around the opposition in the Waikato under-8s' competition, Will Genia was doing whatever 7-year-olds do in Papua New Guinea and Ewen McKenzie was about to finish his Wallaby playing career at the World Cup in South Africa. Sixteen years on, that trio have proved to be useful Queensland ring-ins.

There have been three Super rugby semifinals for the Reds since 1995 but no real whiff of a title-decider and for much of the past decade, fans here have been turning their noses up at what the team have produced. The stench became unbearable just four years ago when the Bulls beat a Reds rabble 92-3 in Pretoria.

Cooper played that day, which shows the value of never throwing in the towel, because if there can be a single reason the Reds finished on top of the Super 15 table, he's it.

There are lots of components to a good team, and without the Slippers, Ioanes, Horwills, and Higginbothams, this 2011 version might not have produced such great results. Without Cooper, they definitely couldn't have.

He's not everyone's cup of tea. He's too flighty for some, and time will tell if he's indeed too flighty for a long, successful test career, but with the blessing and support of McKenzie, and the thoughtful and timely service of Genia, he's been allowed to spread his wings whenever he's seen fit. Occasionally it's backfired, but more often than not it's worked, and what he's done is put rugby back in the good books in Queensland.

It wasn't only the Reds winning that got 50,000 people to Suncorp Stadium for the Crusaders last month, it's been their style of play, and for all the other contributors, Cooper's been the one most in charge of that.

It would be foolish and inaccurate to suggest they have been a one man team, and just as foolish to deny that Cooper hasn't been THE one man in the team. With Gilchrist, Hayden and McGrath in the mix, the Australian cricket team of a few years ago were more than handy, but didn't Warne make a difference?

Cooper is the Reds' Warne.

He's been the architect, Genia has been the engineer and the pack have been the bricklayers.

However, for all the Cooper-inspired flair and risk that have characterised much of the Reds' play this year, the hard-nosed pragmatism that has been evident when required has undoubtedly been drilled into them in both word and example by McKenzie.

It's ironic that there was a fair degree of angst floating about less than two years ago when the thought of a non-Queenslander coaching the Reds was touted as a possibility. Such provincial small-mindedness exists everywhere, but the Reds had fallen into such a state of disrepair that even the blindly parochial seemed to have lost interest in the origins of the next coach.

Apathy ruled.

In floated McKenzie and out went the slide to oblivion. He's been blessed to have the genius of a Cooper in the team, but the trick is to know what to do with genius.

There is a balanced optimism that there could be some use for that bare trophy cabinet in a couple of weeks, but the overwhelming sense is that the 2011 Reds have put rugby back on the map in Queensland, and ultimately that will mean more than silverware.