Rugby College: The constant doubts that drive Mr Rugby Adam ...

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There’s the hair. Great hair, snapped back in place after every one of his 27 Test tries with a deft flick of a wrist. Â

Publicly it’s all effortless â€“Â the glittering career and larrikin charm.

Privately, Adam Ashley-Cooper is locked in battle with obsessive self-doubt.Â

“I feel like I’m never good enough,” he says when asked what drives him.Â

“It’s not quite that â€“Â I know that I’m good â€“Â but I always want to be better. I question myself all the time, that’s probably it.”Â

He is the 95-Test Wallaby who has never done enough to quiet the internal critic.

Five games off his Test century, Australian vice-captain, Super Rugby title winner, grand final man of the match, one of a small clutch of players considered must-signs by the Australian Rugby Union.Â

None of it Âenough for a mind willing and able to turn every honour inside out.Â

“Good enough to start but never good enough to stay in the one position, so was I good enough then? I was thrown around from centre to wing to fullback, filling in holes,” he says by way of demonstration.Â

He is the team man who, when asked to address the Waratahs in the week leading into the grand final, spent 12 hours crafting a poem that made grown men laugh, cry and shiver with anticipation for the battle ahead.

“I take 12 hours to write a poem and still at the end of it I’m thinking ‘is this good, is it good enough’?” he says.Â

“I’m always questioning myself, whether it’s good enough or I’m good enough. At the end of the day it is what personally you go through upstairs [in your head].

“I think that’s what drives me ultimately. It’s almost like an obsession, like my own little OCD [obsessive compulsive disorder], and whether it’s healthy or not healthy, it drives me.”Â

Ashley-Cooper is about to fly to Auckland with the Wallabies, where Eden Park and the full force of New Zealand antipathy awaits.Â

Another 23 Wallabies delivered, presumably for the slaughter, to the cauldron of All Blacks pride.

It’s matches like these you’d grasp at something a bit stiffer than a Wallaby to take into war.Â

A boxing kangaroo perhaps. A great, red boomer, to clean up the New Zealand back three with one thump of a flea-bitten tail.

Can a Wallaby, even 23 of the best, upturn 28 years of history on Saturday night?

“My personal mindset all week hasn’t featured any kind of thought about Eden Park, or hoodoos, or history. It’s just been winning,” Ashley-Cooper says.Â

“When you want to travel and win, you draw back on experiences where you’ve travelled and won before.Â

“For me that’s the Chiefs this year [the Waratahs broke a four-year drought in New Zealand] and other times I’ve done that in the last decade.Â

“It’s just about getting in there, doing a job, and winning. Not letting anything else affect you.”

It’s a skill the All Blacks acquired some time ago. At one point there was the first win, against the odds and under pressure, that became the reference point for the next one.Â

The clutch moments piled up, each one feeding the next, until people started talking about auras and record-breaking winning streaks.Â

It was why they could win the 2011 world cup, come from 19 points behind to beat Ireland in Dublin last year, and hold off the Wallabies in Sydney.

It is also why the seven Waratahs players in the starting line-up, and the three on the bench, are so important to the psychological aspect of this Bledisloe Cup clash.Â

They felt the fear against the Crusaders a few weeks back, two points down with next to nothing on the clock. Â

They felt the fear â€“Â “not this again” â€“Â and faced it. Stared it down and won.Â

“Now I’ve got a sense of confidence in those huge moments, and that’s probably what the All Blacks have been playing on in the last couple of years,” Ashley-Cooper says.Â

“That’s what they’ve got and it’s unbeatable, when you have 15 players thinking with the same level of confidence and arrogance â€“Â but healthy arrogance â€“Â that’s why they’ve been so successful.

“The talent and the effort is no different between the Wallabies and the All Blacks, but their belief and confidence is better.”

On an apparent hiatus from the role of Wallabies’ utility â€“Â good enough now, Adam? â€“Â Ashley-Cooper will take that insight onto the pitch at Eden Park.Â

For 80 minutes, the mind of Australia’s most consistent performer will clear. But not before he moves a few mountains.Â

“I’ve always been scared of competing as well, I’ve always been fearful and scared,” he says.Â

“Once I’m in it I’m sweet and I think I could have done so much better, why did I get so worried?Â

“And sure enough, the next time I’m competing, I’m shitting myself and scared, the whole time questioning whether I’ve done enough, was I enough, was it good enough.

“That’s what drives me. Even though I’m not happy with it, and it doesn’t make me happy at all, I know that’s what drives me. I’ve accepted that’s the way I work.”