KEY POINTS:
He's old school, Greg Cooper. Not one for making a fuss or thinking others should make a fuss about him.
That's why he would have been happy to slip out the back door, leaving the rugby world to draw their conclusions about why he is not seeking to
renew his Blues contract.
He's far too nice, too measured and most importantly, not motivated to sling mud at his fiercest critic, Laurie Mains.
Cooper was assistant to Mains at the Highlanders in 2003, when a rift emerged between the senior players and Mains. Things turned nasty and Mains resigned at the end of the season to be replaced by Cooper.
Given the bilious nature of Mains' pronouncements on Cooper's ability in recent weeks, the former All Black coach appears to carry a grievance.
"That's pretty disappointing to be honest," says Cooper, "that someone would carry on like that.
"I don't know what his agenda is but there are some facts that have been distorted. The one indisputable measurement for attack is the number of tries a team scores and in that regard the Blues improved in 2008 from 2007.
"I think whoever gets the Blues job will find that David [Nucifora] has done a great job. If they carry on with much of what he has done both on and off the field and add a little bit of their own style into the mix, then they should be in pretty good shape."
It's a confident assessment of a side that finished sixth. But let's not forget - Cooper has been in the business for seven years. He might have some idea of what he is talking about.
That's not to say he and Nucifora are beyond criticism.
The decision to switch Isa Nacewa and Nick Evans was a theoretical master stroke, but, weighing everything up, the Blues missed the counterattacking power of Nacewa and the long kicking game of Evans.
Mistakes were made, for sure, but even Sir Robbie of Deans isn't perfect. By saying, as Mains supposedly did, that Cooper was a failure at the Highlanders and the Blues robs a decent coach of much credibility.
The Blues had lost 10 senior players from their 2007 squad and the 2008 crop were never vintage.
They were struggling at halfback, Evans drifted into a void, Troy Flavell looked increasingly tired, Keven Mealamu took an age to get into it and Isaia Toeava never got into it.
Blame the coaches? How about individual responsibility? Sixth place for the Blues was about right and, in time, the three 9th places and 8th the Highlanders achieved under Cooper between 2004 and 2007, will start to look Herculean efforts.
The Highlanders didn't have the class to compete and that was no one's fault. It could be argued they had Anton Oliver, Carl Hayman and James Ryan. Good All Blacks that they were, and in Hayman's case a world class one, Super Rugby has never been won by gnarled forwards.
For the four years Cooper was in charge, only once did he have a competitive midfield - when Anthony Tuitavake was drafted South to team up with Seilala Mapasua. With Nick Evans pulling the strings at first five that year, the Highlanders went on a charge and were, briefly, a threat.
The campaign fizzled out with an injury to Evans and when fatigue settled in. But for that year, we saw what Cooper could do when he was able to select the right players.
And then the decree came from the madhouse that the Highlanders would no longer use the draft. Instead, Cooper would be restricted to selecting from Otago and Southland.
It was an insane and doomed idea that led to the core group of senior Highlanders deciding 2007 would be their last campaign in the Deep South.
Hayman, Oliver, Clarke Dermody, Ryan, Josh Blackie and Evans all scarpered. Cooper didn't exactly rush to congratulate the executive team for their genius.
"I made my feelings known," he said. "It was obviously pretty tough not using the draft, but as a coach, there comes a point when you have to accept what has happened and make the most of it.
"Back in the amateur days it was a lot easier for the University [Otago] to get players. It was essentially a transfer market free of charge. Now very few players make it down to Otago and, with money tight, it is harder to get players on the transfer market.
"In 2005 we were a chance of sneaking into the semifinals and I think that maybe people will look back to those years and see eighth as a pretty good performance."
And 2005 may indeed prove to be the highlight of Cooper's Super 14 career. He won't be staying with the Blues next season. Instead, he has taken some coaching consultancy work with Japanese club NEC.
It sounds like a step down, a change of pace, because that is exactly what it is. For Cooper, the ubiquitous "for family reasons" is not some thinly veiled euphemism to disguise he got the chop but was afforded the dignity to feign jumping.
Cooper's 12-year-old daughter, Alexandra, has Crohn's Disease, an inflammatory condition of the bowel. Cooper's family - wife Samantha, children Alexandra, Ben and Hannah - stayed in Dunedin when he came to Auckland last year.
"The kids have been up at school holidays and loved being in Auckland," says Cooper. "When I was talking about taking the Blues assistant job there was a possibility that David might move on to coach Australia so there were no guarantees beyond this year.
"If David had stayed on we might have all moved up for another year but it just wasn't advisable for Alexandra to be moved away from her specialist.
"For the last 15 years I have been pretty full-on working for Lion Breweries and my TV work then coaching so I have been away a lot.
"The idea of consultancy work in Japan is that I can head up for there for three or four weeks at a time and then come home and be at home. Really be at home and be there for the kids.
"For the next 12 months that is the plan. The disease is manageable and we are getting it under control and maybe further down the track I'll look at my options."
It would be nice to think that there will be options. Too many experienced coaches have been casually tossed aside, which is a strange policy for a rugby administration obsessed about the lack of leaders in the game.
Probably, in reality, Cooper's coaching record lacks the statistical punch others can showcase. While his work with the Highlanders was under-appreciated and poorly evaluated by his critics, the coaching world tends to be black and white - number of games won against number of games lost.
History is no great sympathiser of those thrown a team of misfits and told to make them gel. Which is a great shame because so much of what Cooper offers is hard to measure.
At 15, he was told he would be dead in six months due to inoperable bone cancer. Cooper cried, not for particularly long before announcing he wasn't going to die - he was going to be an All Black.
His body was pummelled with chemotherapy and radiotherapy for two years. There were times when his mother sat with him on the couch all night, worried there would be nothing left of her eldest son, so ferocious was his vomiting.
The incredible part of the Cooper story is not that he survived, it is that at 21, he fulfilled his dream - he became an All Black. Inspirational figures are in short supply right now. Cooper will be missed.
