Hooper: Things can only get better

Wallabies captain Michael Hooper believes his team can “flip 30 points” from Sydney’s ugly 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 defeat with a 29-9 loss in Wellington, but the new skipper indicated there was more optimism this year despite losing 54-34 at the 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 the potential of the team. “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 just weren’t doing anything we’d spoken about in the first half, 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.

Australia put points on the board in an improved second half in Sydney.

“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 right now, given NSW repeatedly followed the same pattern. Give up a big first-half lead, win the secondhalf 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 four wins all year.

“Yeah there were some similarities (with Waratahs games) and I did finish up the game thinking that way,” Hooper said. The quick turnaround is a positive for the wounded Australians, believes Hooper.

“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.