Wallaby gold: How Cooper Woods channelled an Australian rugby legend

Livigno: Cooper Woods does not know what it is like to see the Wallabies win the Rugby World Cup. Born almost a full year after Australia’s second triumph in 1999, he may yet be waiting a while to see it with his own eyes – or maybe not, if they follow the stirring example he has set for Australian sporting underdogs.

But Woods does know now what it is like to be an Olympic champion, and for that, partial credit must go to John Eales, the legendary former Wallabies captain. The spirit of ‘Nobody’ flows through him.

When Eales lined up the 34 goals and 31 conversions he scored for Australia, he went through a methodical pre-kick process to ensure he was in the right headspace, a technique he picked up after watching All Blacks legend Grant Fox go about his business at Ballymore one day back when Eales was still an amateur.

First, he would line up the ball. Then he would take three steps back, and three across.

Then he would say a few things to himself in his head: “Head down,” to check his weight was over the ball, “Slow,” to make sure he didn’t rush himself, and finally, “Follow through to the posts.”

It was a way of removing the pressure from any moment and reducing it to a simple, repetitive, unintimidating checklist.

“[That way] it doesn’t become a kick to win or lose the game,” Eales said on The Good, The Bad and The Rugby podcast last year. “It becomes head down, slow, follow through to the posts.”

It clearly worked for him. And on Thursday, it worked for Woods, too.

Eales shared his strategy with Woods when the two linked up in 2022, when the latter was awarded a scholarship through the Sport Australia Hall of Fame mentoring program.

Then a budding skier with unrealised Olympic dreams, Woods said it was a huge part of how he pulled off his miraculous victory at Milano Cortina 2026.

“I’ve been pretty fortunate to work with some pretty amazing people,” he said.

“John Eales is a wonderful guy. That was something he introduced to me, to help me align myself and get myself ready to compete. We actually communicated just before the qualification one, and I told him that I was still running the same things that we did back then, with the cues ... [it’s] something I’ve taken to a lot of high-pressure moments, where it gives me a sense of time and presence and discipline. It’s just life advice in major moments like that. I’m very thankful to have John in my corner.”

Woods, of course, adapted the Eales method to his chosen pursuit, which is about as far away from rugby as imaginable. But the big building blocks of greatness don’t change; only the skills and the setting.

And it helps explain why Woods reacted the way he did when he received his gold medal on the podium: by yelling “Let’s go!” at the top of his lungs. Those words have a deeper meaning.

That’s one of his three steps: “Let’s go!” is what he says to fire himself up when he pushes out each time he skis. It may as well now be his trademark.

“Words of affirmation and positivity,” he said. “It’s like, ‘You’ve got this. You believe this. This is your moment. Let’s not hold back, and actually show the world what we can do.’

“Especially being Australian; we’re a summer destination, we should be kicking the feet out back of Bondi. Here we are, taking charge in Italy … we’re a dominant nation in winter sport. We’re not just here to joke around.”

The exact order of his three steps are a little harder to identify; Woods was so frazzled in his post-ceremony press conference, so spun out by the fact he was Australia’s newest Olympic great, so stunned by the gold medal he had pulled out from the fire, that he initially referred to Eales as a rugby league player before correcting himself when his faux-pax was pointed out to him.

But Woods did give us this: “I close my eyes and I go through my run … and remember every little point of the journey down the run, because that helps me be present.” The words of affirmation, we think, come last.

Job done. Thanks, Ealesy.

The Winter Olympic Games is broadcast on the 9Network, 9Now and Stan Sport.

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