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Michael Hooper 'stone cold' ahead of final home game of career
By AAP
Michael Hooper won't let the emotions of his final Super Rugby Pacific home game ruin an important finals warm-up match when the NSW Waratahs host Moana Pasifika.
The Wallabies' most-capped captain, Hooper will have the honour of wearing the skipper's armband when he runs on in the sky blue at Allianz Stadium for the final time on Saturday night before departing the club.
Jake Gordon has handed over the captaincy with the Tahs assured of a sixth-placed finish and a dreaded trip across the Tasman to Auckland to face the Blues in next week's sudden-death quarter-finals.
No Australian team has ever won a Super Rugby finals match in Australia and the Blues' 16-9 win over the Highlanders on Friday night ensured they'd host the Waratahs in Auckland next week as the third-placed finishers.
Regardless, Waratahs back-rower Langi Gleeson said Hooper had been at his motivational best ahead of a NSW swan song
"He's spoken a lot more than he normally does - and he does speak a lot," Gleeson said with a laugh.
"He's been pretty motivational this week, which is good. As always he's just confident helping the boys, everything's about the team.
"He's been stone cold.
"He was one of my favourite players growing up ... watching him just killing it for the Wallabies.
"Last year was my first time meeting him and I'm still a bit starstruck even talking to him now."
Moana, struggling this year with an 0-13 record, will be motivated themselves, looking to ensure they don't finish the campaign with a winless return.
Gleeson, who has signed an extension with Rugby Australia and the Waratahs through to 2025, will come off the bench, but it's an impressive lineup for NSW as they look to regain winning touch.
They didn't have the class to go with the damaging Crusaders last weekend, beaten 42-18.
Gleeson noted the importance of hitting finals in good form.
"Ever since pre-season, we've been talking about finals but at the moment we like to take things week by week," he said.
"So this week, we want to put in a good performance and have a good lead up to finals by beating Moana this week.
"I feel like it'll be the same as the Drua - big contact, big running, big ball-runners.
"We've just got to level the intensity and just play our own footy. It'll be a really good game to watch for the fans."
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Go to commentsNo full games on the IRU YT channel unfortunately, all on subscription? Looks a fairly good level (1A).
Yes I mean I wouldn’t really know the local ratio of origin here, but certainly as a province with less resources mine has a ratio that veers heavily towards club rep. The club stories are often the best so get probably an imbalanced proportion of coverage to where most players actually come from though.
Those were a couple of Ulster (regional) clubs too, good good. Those clubs/size towns are very much where you find most talent coming from (compared to the big city), so your productivity depends very much on your systems in place for scouting talent. With the more wealthy and popular sport of NRL (hence more info out there) I’ve seen some interesting studies on player origins in this respect, which I think would be a very balanced base of data to draw conclusions from.
Yes I’m wondering how those names as examples compare to the likes of Bryne getting squeezed out for a lack of places. I’m only thinking of effects far down the line as a result of Irelands #1 ranking and increased publicity/interest and how Irelands system will take advantage of them.
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