QUADE COOPER could barely contain his amusement as he was repeatedly quizzed about being New Zealand's "Public Enemy Number One" at a news conference he described as resembling the Jerry Springer Showyesterday.

The Wallabies outhalf, a New Zealand-born Maori who moved to Australia as a teenager, has been a fixture in the local media since he arrived in Auckland last week. Criticism of his supposed feud with New Zealand skipper Richie McCaw culminated in Australia’s 1991 World Cup winning skipper Nick Farr-Jones describing Cooper as a “boofhead” ahead of what he anticipated being an All Blacks-Wallabies final.

Yesterday’s Australian news conference was a packed house and there was no doubting who was star of the show.

For his first couple of attempts to tackle questions about his unpopularity, the 23-year-old tried a little spin.

“The positive is that people are backing us to make the final against New Zealand,” he said. “But a lot of things have got to happen for us to be in the final against the All Blacks and we’ve got a massive game against the Irish and we have to give Ireland the respect they deserve.”

For the next question on the subject, he said he had found Aucklanders very supportive and suggested it was all a media invention.

Finally, as coach Robbie Deans appealed for reporters to get back to discussing the team selected to play Ireland in Pool C tomorrow, Cooper resorted to bluntness.

“To be honest, I don’t really care,” he said.

Cooper later tweeted he had struggled to contain his amusement and compared the news conference to the American trash-talk TV show.

". . . it was like a Jerry Springer show," he said on his Twitter page (twitter.com/#!/QuadeCooper).

To be fair to the local media, Cooper has sometimes playfully stoked the fires himself, suggesting, for example, that his reputation got him selected for dope testing after Australia’s 32-6 opening victory over Italy last weekend.