Hooper’s hope for a huge turnaround
MICHAEL Hooper believes the Wallabies can “flip 30 points” from Sydney’s scoreline by executing their game plan in the second Bledisloe Cup game in Dunedin.
For the second year running, Hooper’s team has travelled to New Zealand trying to figure out how to turn around a heavy trans-Tasman loss inside a week.
Last year the Wallabies followed a 42-8 drubbing with a 29-9 loss in Wellington, but the new skipper indicated there was more optimism now despite copping a 54-34 caning last weekend. The Wallabies rallied to score 28 points in the second half and while some would argue it’s a trap to focus on the points scored column above the points conceded, Hooper said it was a sign of their potential.
“We didn’t do what we wanted to do, so it’s not like we did everything we could and it wasn’t good enough,” Hooper said.
“If we’d gone out there and did what you wanted and they beat you anyway, then you’d go sheesh. But there is a different feeling between last year’s loss and this year’s loss.
“The feeling (at half-time) was we weren’t doing anything we’d spoken about, so why not go back out there and try and make it different. We spoke about putting them under pressure and it started to work.
“Yes, people say they were so far in front and so on. But the reality is they’re the best team in the world and we scored 30 odd points. So that’s positive from us.”
Those familiar with the Waratahs season may be hearing alarm bells given NSW repeatedly followed the same pattern.
Give up a big first-half lead, win the second-half but still lose. And then bank on the potential seen in the second half to eventually take the team around a corner in their season. But the corner never came for the Waratahs and they finished with a paltry 4-10 record.
“Yeah there were some similarities (with Waratahs games) and I did finish up the game thinking that way,” Hooper said.
“I guess the difference is we would look at a Tahs game and there was a different issue each week. Here we have only played one game.
“However, we did fall down last week against these guys and we can flip 30 points just by doing the things we said we were going to do, but didn’t carry out into the game. It may have helped having a warm-up game.
“Obviously there were mistakes – myself included – where they got two or three easy tries.”
WE CAN FLIP 30 POINTS JUST BY DOING THE THINGS WE SAID WE WERE GOING TO DO ... MICHAEL HOOPER