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 Capped 58 times, Cooper was part of the Wallabies squad that
finished runners-up at the 2015 Rugby World Cup. He then signed up
to Australia's Sevens program, seeking a spot on their Olympic
squad.
Cooper was given permission by his French club Toulon to be part of
the Las Vegas and Vancouver rounds of the World Series for Australia
but it was not enough.
The 28-year-old was not sufficiently prepared in order to make the
cut for the Olympics in August, Australian Sevens head coach Andy
Friend said in a statement.
"There's no doubt Quade is a quality player, but put simply, we just
haven't had the opportunity to work with him as much as we would
have liked over the past five months," Friend said.
 "Each day I have a group of 20-plus players working on different
structures and patterns of play and I don't think we would have got
the very best out of Quade had we just thrown him into a tournament
with limited preparation -- particularly for an event as momentous
as the Olympics."
Rugby Sevens makes its Olympic debut at the Aug. 5-21 Games. The
last time rugby featured at an Olympics was in the 1924 Games in
Paris, where the United States beat France for gold.
New Zealand-born Cooper found it hard to make the switch, as was
evident from his struggles during the World Series tournament, and
was left out of the final two rounds in Paris and London this month.
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"As many players have found out throughout this season's World
Series, it is no easy task to transition from fifteens to the Sevens
form of the game," Friend added.
"Although we are still a few months out from the Games, I think it
offers the fairest outcome for everyone by making the call now.
Quade can channel his energies into Toulon, while we can enter the
next phase of our preparations for Rio knowing the direction we want
to take."
(Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly; Editing by Ossian Shine and Mark
Trevelyan)
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