Waratahs’ Michael Hooper, Sekope Kepu and Nick Phipps join Super Rugby 100 club against Brumbies
SEKOPE Kepu, Nick Phipps and Michael Hooper will bring up 100 Super Rugby games against the Brumbies. After NSW’s poor start, their experience is needed.
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MICHAEL Hooper isn’t going to raise a bat when he earns his 100th Super Rugby cap against the club that gave him his first, the Brumbies, on Saturday.
Deflecting the “nice” milestone, Hooper says he and Nick Phipps — who’ll also bring up a mixed-club century at Allianz Stadium — will stay out of Sekope Kepu’s deserved limelight this week.
A third centurion, Kepu is the only one to do it all in sky blue and will become the eighth man to play 100 games for NSW when the meet their Canberra rivals.
“They’re massive games for us and really fun weeks for us to be a part of,” Hooper said.
“It is not something he’ll want to be part of too much, but (Kepu) is a great man for the club and a great man outside of rugby as well.”
Hooper’s 100 (31 Brumbies/69 NSW) comes at the young age of 25 and while he may not dwell much on milestones, eight seasons of Super Rugby have given the NSW skipper a handy perspective that is required for the Tahs at the moment.
NSW have just come home from a horror South African trip that produced two heavy losses and a total of 92 points conceded. They’re fourth-last on the ladder with just one win.
It might appear panic button time but Hooper’s experience has taught him this much: when you’re still counting games on one hand, stay well away from the button.
“We have seen over the years, Kiwi teams in particular, go quite a few down early in the season and manage to find their groove later and get onto a bit of a roll,” Hooper said.
“Things we have seen from teams who have done well is they really get steamrollering towards the back end and become an unstoppable force. We just have to focus on a week at a time.”
NSW’s slow starts have had mixed impact. They won in 2014 after losing four of their first nine games, and still played semi-finals after losing 3 of first 7 a year later. But going 2-4 last year proved fatal.
The sight of Bernard Foley at training on Tuesday was a positive for the Tahs, who have sorely missed the star no. 10 in the opening three rounds. Foley, who is recovering from concussion, didn’t do contact work and will be assessed later in the week to see if his post-exercise symptoms have faded.
Will Skelton, Jed Holloway and Ned Hanigan are also on track to return from injury and their ball-carrying power will be valuable against the Brumbies, who remind Hooper of “a South African outfit”.
“It’s a great game to come back to,” he said. “The Brumbies are a really solid team (who had) narrow losses in a couple of their games and after finally getting the win they’ll be full of confidence.”
The 100-game milestones will add further fuel for “Brumbies week” and the Waratahs will need every drop. Defying expectations they’d struggle badly without their missing legion of Test stars, the Brumbies have showed plenty of grit under new skipper Sam Carter.
Defence coach Nathan Grey conceded the Tahs had been “clunky” in attack and defence so far this year but staying away from the panic button means the Waratahs won’t change style.
“We definitely will persist in what we are doing,” defensive coach Nathan Grey said.
“When things aren’t going well you always look back and think how you can change things and tweak things to get a better performance but the foundation of what we are doing, and how we want to play and our identity, that’s rock solid.”
NSW’s major crime, said Grey, has been giving away hard-won territory and possession with simple errors and “unforgivably” high penalty counts.
“I think the guys are a little too keen,” he said. “Guys are trying to force the issue a little bit.”
The Tahs will hope they can replicate the 100-game celebrations for Rob Horne and Dave Dennis last year, in which NSW beat the Chiefs and Force respectively. Kepu, who debuted for NSW in 2008, will lead the team out.
Originally published as Waratahs’ Michael Hooper, Sekope Kepu and Nick Phipps join Super Rugby 100 club against Brumbies
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