Harlequins close in on Hurricanes assistant Brad Cooper as new attack coach

Harlequins are closing in on appointing Hurricanes assistant Brad Cooper as their new attack coach, with head coach Jason Gilmore confirming the club expects to fill the final vacancy in their performance staff imminently.

Cooper, the son of Taranaki coaching legend Colin Cooper, has spent the past two seasons with the Hurricanes in Super Rugby. His father Colin was one of Robbie Deans’ assistants when the Crusaders won the Super Rugby title in 2002, and it is Deans himself — appointed as Harlequins’ performance director in March — who has played a significant role in the current recruitment process.

“Our performance team are finalised, our medical team is almost there. We’ve just got one more position to fill in attack. We’re just getting the last position finalised this week,” Gilmore said. “There will definitely be new faces coming in, and there’ll be some internal staff promotions of people who have done well here that we want to invest in and give them the opportunity to grow as well.”

Gilmore added that Deans has been a close collaborator throughout the process, speaking by phone three or four times a week. “He’ll watch our training and obviously watch our games, and we’ll catch up off the back of those. We’re going through the recruitment of some key stuff, and he’s also been a part of that.”

Brad Cooper, who has also coached Taranaki and the New Zealand Under-20s, is understood to have been interviewed for the attack coach role alongside Dan Bowden, the former Bath, Leicester Tigers and London Irish fly-half who currently serves on Eddie Jones’s Japan coaching staff.

Separately, there are reports that former Harlequins winger Jordan Turner-Hall — a popular figure among supporters during his playing days at the club — is in line for a promotion from the academy to a defence coaching role this summer, representing one of the internal appointments Gilmore alluded to.