Waratahs flanker Michael Hooper ahead his last Super Rugby game in Sydney.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos / The Sydney Morning Herald
Adam Ashley-Cooper first laid eyes on Michael Hooper at the end of 2009, when the 18-year-old breakaway from Sydney arrived in Canberra for his first summer with the Brumbies.
“He was a young surfie kid with wax still in his hair, straight out of the surf at Manly,” Ashley-Cooper recalled.
“There wasn’t much to him. He was just a kid who turned up hungry, and it was probably within the completion of the first pre-season, he gained a lot of eyes. It wasn’t long before he was given a crack, he scored a few tries on debut, and the rest is history.”
It is some history. After making his Super Rugby debut in 2010, Hooper has spent the subsequent 14 seasons as a colossus of Australian rugby, captaining the Wallabies and leading NSW to a Super Rugby title.
At the age of 31, he has elected to move on and will draw the first curtain of his stellar career on Saturday night when he plays his last Super Rugby game in Sydney.
Though he passed on the NSW captaincy several years ago, Hooper will lead the Tahs one last time as a stand-in for Jake Gordon. Post-game presentations and video tributes will honour the man who has bled sky blue for a decade.
Whether NSW Rugby will send a note of thanks to former Brumbies coach Jake White remains to be seen, but they might consider one. Were it not for a summer of indecision from the ex-Springboks coach, Hooper may have never returned to Sydney.
Michael Hooper poses at the Waratahs headquarters in Daceyville.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos / The Sydney Morning Herald
After debuting for the Brumbies in 2010 as injury cover for George Smith, the young Hooper only won a handful of caps for the Brumbies in 2011, when Smith had moved on and the club preferred Colby Fainga’a at openside. White came in for the 2012 season and armed with strong South African sensibilities, he also overlooked Hooper, starting the year with 120kg flanker Ita Vaea at no.7.
The story goes that White viewed Hooper as too small – a “boy” compared to South African behemoths – and at one point Hooper was even discussed as potential halfback cover for an injured Nic White.
Michael Hooper makes a break on debut for the Brumbies in 2010.Credit: Getty
Hooper soon demanded selection from the bench, however, and White was starting the youngster six weeks into the season. But the Waratahs had made the most of that brief window, sneaking in to make contact with Hooper. Within a few months, NSW had their man.
Hooper talks of growing immensely under White and later made his Wallabies debut in 2012, and the coach also grew to value a “fetcher” so much he went and recruited a future balance-of-power senator, David Pocock, to move to Canberra from the Force.
Hooper moved back to Sydney in 2013, and as Ashley-Cooper says, the rest is celebrated history. Within two years, the flanker had won the first two of his seven Waratahs’ best player awards, a John Eales medal and was holding the Super Rugby trophy aloft at Accor Stadium, having led NSW to their first title.
Michael Hooper poses as a new Waratahs recruit in 2013.Credit: Anthony Johnson
Friends and former Waratahs teammates of Hooper were this week only too willing to share their admiration for the 31-year-old, and the outstanding service he has given NSW Rugby.
“He has to go down as one of the greats, doesn’t he?” former NSW and Wallabies prop Benn Robinson said. “When you think about great Waratahs No.7s, you think of Phil Waugh, and now you think of Michael Hooper as well. That’s fair company.”
Michael Hooper through the years in Super Rugby, from 2010 to 2023Credit: Getty
Robinson remembers being first stunned by Hooper’s athleticism when he was used in an attacking set-play against the Crusaders in 2013, and after making a line break he skinned an All Blacks fullback on the outside and set up a try.
“He just ran around Israel Dagg,” Robinson said. “Just to see his different qualities, his speed and stuff, and for me it was ‘wowee, how good is this bloke?’.”
Ashley-Cooper moved offshore after the 2015 Rugby World Cup and says the player he most got asked about in change rooms was Hooper.
“You get asked a lot of questions about what sort of cat is he and what sort of beast he is, and I always referred to him as a guy who plays the game with a complete disregard for his body,” Ashley-Cooper said.
“And there are not many in the game like that, who apply that much effort. You questioned how long that would last, and how sustainable it was. But I use the example, it’s not just how he plays but how he trains as well. You’d be halfway through a session and you’d be getting flogged, and you would have a quick break and everyone is hands-on-heads, sucking in seagulls … but there’s Hoops still pacing around the group because he just couldn’t stop. He has that mindset. When he is on, he isn’t stopping. And that’s what we see when he plays, and the effort he put in, day in and day out.”
When Hooper moved to the Waratahs, he began rooming with Rob Horne, and they only stopped when Horne also moved overseas in 2017.
“I don’t think I ever played a game with him where he wasn’t top three player on the field,” Horne said.
“Every game, he was top three. It didn’t matter if it was a defensive game, a territory game – he’d be top tackler with zero misses – or if it was attacking game, he’s scored two tries or something. He is an unbelievable player.”
Michael Hooper celebrates his 2013 John Eales Medal.Credit: Getty
Like Ashley-Cooper, Horne was often asked by players in overseas change rooms: what’s Hooper like?
“Because he is a World XV player but all they see is that full-on, focused, serious competitor. But it was easy to answer: he is a legend, he is a good person,” Horne said.
“But he is just a Manly kid who is a bit of a homebody, and when he gets time off, he likes to be back in his area. He just wants to be home and be with his family and his mates. He still skateboards around the beachfront at Manly.”
Though stories abound of Hooper being highly approachable – he once spotted Waratahs fans at a bus stop and gave them a lift to his game – the 31-year-old has always avoided the spotlight.
Michael Hooper playing against Queensland in 2020.Credit: Getty
“And so the follow-on from that is the general public probably don’t have a great appreciation of the man. By virtue of being a leader you have to do it a bit more, but I feel like the public haven’t really got to know the man,” Horne said.
“But as a person, he is just – again – one of those guys you feel privileged to have in your circle.”
Long-time teammate and friend Bernard Foley laughs about his first encounter with Hooper when the pair were rookies, playing in a second-grade match between Sydney Uni and Manly.
“I sprayed him, giving it to him about being the next hotshot and he chased me around the field for 80 minutes,” Foley said.
“I didn’t realise he was coming off a leg injury, and it was his first game back. He was chasing me on one leg.”
When Foley and Hooper became teammates at NSW a few years later, the flanker was wary of Foley.
“I gave him a lifelong hatred of tens,” Foley said.
“We got off on the wrong foot, but it didn’t take long to become good mates.
“I have huge respect for Hoops. As a player, he is just an incredible character who backs it up every week. Whatever he is going through, injuries, personal challenges, whatever, he fronts up and delivers week-in, week-out. He is a warrior.”
It’s easy to overlook how much responsibility Hooper took on for the Waratahs over the last decade, reckons Horne, and many of those were dark days.
One last time … Waratahs flanker Michael Hooper at Allianz Stadium.Credit: Phil Hillyard/Venues NSW
“From a demeanour and mentality perspective, he carried a burden for a long stretch there, where the team had gone through transition and he was still out there leading, with a young, raw team around him, who were getting belted,” Horne said.
“He was still that guy, putting in a huge shift every single week, for no reward. That can get on top of you. But his time in Japan [in 2022] was really good, to get up there and play with different guys and have that life experience, that helped with perspective.
“To know he doesn’t have to put the world on his shoulders. Because he does, he always has because he cares so much.
“And that’s what supporters of a club want, in the end, all they want to know is the players care as much as they do.
“Hoops always cared. And they always knew.”
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