Colin Cooper Quotations

When I left Bradford and got a phone call from Dave Parnaby asking 'did I want to come back in?', I was delighted to accept. The whole buzz at the club at the moment is great for someone like me who is still learning and wanting to hopefully go into management in my own right at some point.

He will strengthen our decision-making, along with the team's self belief.

He had as much pre-season game time as Jimmy had and we have to trust our depth.

He doesn't like the bench. He's like a bear with a sore tooth.

He looks pretty good. He's still bracketed and we still need to monitor him and we'll have a look at him (today).

He's just so young, you have to give him a chance to find his feet for a while.

He was incredibly smart, witty and friendly. Everybody's really devastated by this.

He lived for it. It was his life. The cycling team was his family out here. He was incredibly dedicated to the sport.

I thought we adapted better in the rain, simply because we were more committed.

Just having him back, with his knowledge, what he does and the belief that he'll give the group.

I think he is only going to get better and better.

You'll have to wait and see. The team will be named on Friday.

We'll compete in the set pieces (against the Bulls) and I'm excited about what we can do on attack.

We will see how he is and make the call that's best for him.

We can't give South African teams that much ball.

We have to wait until it settles down before an assessment is made.

When I joined it was at the same time that he came back to the club after running a few sports shops and it was very lucky for me, he saw something in me as a 16-year-old that he saw in himself,

We sent a lot of good messages to the other teams that this team is going to be a threat.

This work is potentially very important in terms of understanding how prostate cancer develops, but the results must now be confirmed in a larger number of prostate cancer samples.

We've got the South African teams now, in a row, and we just can't give the South Africans that much ball.

Tuesday we went pretty intense, but we can't do that all week and expect them to perform at the weekend. Everyone's under the same hammer. It's about which team is smarter to react to that.

We had to be down early to get the best stuff for the pros we looked after and then get the rags that we were left ourselves for training. It seems very old school but it grounded me as a person and made me appreciate everything as a footballer, because all we got was a pair of boots.

We weren't treated as prima-donnas. We had to roll up our sleeves and graft with the groundsman. Kids don't have to do anymore. That makes you appreciate things when it turns in your favour and you become a successful professional.

The travel back is always tough (on players) and it won't be easy.

I've stated before that nine and 10 are my concerns and David is another option there,

I've read the original and I'm really looking forward to reading the new chapters by Hilary and Willie's kids,

It was very disappointing because it was an incident between two players. We're handling it ourselves.

The team's been together the last couple of years and we have high expectations of ourselves.

After joining as a youth trainee at 16 from school, in my first two or three years the club was on a financial downward spiral and there was none of the new sparkling kit and the sparkling conditions that the kids get now.

It's a huge loss, both on and off the field.

It's tough on a kid to leave the Crusaders when he was part of them winning the title,

It's only his second game at first five-eighth . . . so he's got a lot of promise. He played fullback for a while as you saw, and he can kick goals. He's a pretty special player.

It's unbelievably freakish. It's an absolute tragedy. You're always worried about getting into a bike wreck, about getting hit by a car, but nobody would think about a tree falling on you. That's the last thing you would think of.

It's not a nice thing. I heard he was pretty crook, I didn't actually see him but I heard he was pretty crook.

It's disappointing. It was an issue between two players and it's not a big thing.

I'm from a council estate myself, and the biggest release we had as kids was football. That's where all the great players learn their trade - as kids having a kickabout.

I have to show the players we believe in our depth. It's about creating an environment that creates enthusiasm and hopefully keeps us heading in the right direction.

I played with a fracture in my foot for seven months without knowing it.

How do you do that? You have to train full contact. I don't like doing that (at this stage of the season), but that's the only way . . . that's why we are training the way we are training.

He's one of those managers you'd give your left leg to play for.

The Cats are very strong in the lineout and you've got to watch the one-off runners who come through the middle. We've just got to play smart against them -- that's been our key this week -- to play smart.

The good thing was we had a win, which will boost the confidence of the players, and I thought it was a pretty good spectacle. It's early days and we can't take too much out of these games, so we've got our feet firmly on the ground.