Quade Cooper unavailable for Barbarians game confirms Dave Rennie

Australia head coach Dave Rennie has confirmed that playmaker Quade Cooper will not be part of Barbarians squad when they face Samoa at Twickenham Stadium on 27th November.

Cooper recently made a return to the Wallabies squad for the Queensland leg of the Rugby Championship after a four-year hiatus and played a pivotal role in the side completing double wins over the Springboks and Argentina.

Barbarians released a statement announcing Cooper's addition to the squad but the 33-year-old immediately denied the news saying he is committed to play for Japanese club Kintetsu Liners.

“We jumped the gun on that one there,” Rennie told the official website of Rugby Australia.

“We’d spoken to Quade, but he’s got a club to go back to, too.

“We’re obviously keen for him to tour and stay another week, but obviously that makes it a little more difficult.

“He was certainly interested but he hadn’t committed. All good, no damage done.”

Meanwhile, Rennie, who will be coaching the Barbarians also confirmed that Australia's Jordan Petaia will be starting at fullback for the game against Samoa.

“We’re constantly talking about players who are overseas, we’ve spoken about everyone over there but we’re still trying to promote from within,” said Rennie last week about the full-back position.

“We think Hodgey (Reece Hodge) can do a job for us there. We’ve got Andrew Kellaway, who’s played a little bit of 15, certainly trained a lot at 15 for us.

‘We’d like to see Jordie play a lot of 15 at Super level before considering him at Test level and the plan is from a Barbarians point of view, Jordie will stay and play number 15 in that game.”