Quade Cooper cops $60,000 fine

Kiwis everywhere have enough reasons to hate Quade Cooper, but even we might feel a pang of sympathy after a Twitter-rant criticising the wrong people, and the wrong video game, landed him with a $60,000 fine.

Wallabies five-eighty Cooper was this week found guilty by the Australian Rugby Union (ARU) disciplinary committee for breaking the ARU code of conduct in September.

The fine also comes with a three-match suspension, and comes after Cooper criticised the ARU, the Wallabies and the Rugby Challenge video game sanctioned by the ARU.

Cooper, who landed himself in the bad books with rugby fans everywhere when he dropped a sneaky knee to the head of All Blacks captain Richie McCaw in August last year, described the Wallabies setup as “toxic”, and said the situation was “destroying him as a person”.

He received a $50,000 fine for those comments, as well as his three-match ban.

A further $10,000 was added to the original fine for his comments about Rugby Challenge; a tweet from a fan asked Cooper if he liked FIFA 12 or Rugby Challenge, to which he replied “Rugby challenge is the sh*ittest game.”

Rugby Challenge is in fact New Zealand-made by Wellington-based studio Sidhe.

Managing-Director Mario Wynands says Cooper is entitled to his opinion, but should be careful what he says to developers.

“Mr Cooper, like any gamer, is entitled to his opinions on our games and we don’t begrudge him that…that being said, we’ll be sure to take special care of his player stats if we develop a Rugby Challenge sequel.”

We’d like to know what you guys think – is Cooper justified in making whatever comments he likes, or should he have kept his mouth shut?