4
I really enjoy Hooper’s running game.
His first try was a bottler and the 2nd resulted from his running support play – being in the right place at the right time.
Yes he continues to be busy but is ineffective and often not where the team needs him most.
It’s interesting to compare some ruck involvement stats up until the time when Toomua went off at 52 minutes.:
Toomua – Involvement in 25 rucks with 1st or 2nd involvement for 17 of these (68%).
Horne – Involvement in 9 rucks with 1st or 2nd involvement for 7 of these (78%).
Hooper – Involvement in 33 rucks with 1st or 2nd involvement for 15 of these (45%).
So what do we see from this?
1. Hooper’s ruck involvement for the first 52 minutes of the game was equal to the combined total of Toomua (outside Center) and Horne (Winger). This confirms his work rate.
2.Toomua/Horne were 1st or 2nd at rucks on average 70% of the time compared to Hooper’s 45%.
3. I doubt if we’d see such stats for any other team in International Rugby i.e. when the Openside Flanker leaves a lot of the hard ruck work to Outside Backs.
4. Surely these Outside Backs would be of more use running out wide or cutting inside to take the pass at pace rather than working so hard up close and personal?
After Toomua had gone off the ground, for the remaining 28 minutes of the game, Hooper had another 8 ruck involvements with 1st or 2nd involvement for 7 of these. (88%) This lifted his game average for 1st & 2nd involvement to 53%. Still well short of Toomua’s 68% and Rob Horne’s 75%.
Hooper missed another 2 tackles (one of which partly enabled a try for the Pumas). His tackling was at 80% effectiveness. He's averaging 83% for the 7 Tests this year. He has averaged about 91% in Super XV rugby.
Most pundits heavily criticised Simmons for his mindless obstruction which caused Pek Cowan’s try to be disallowed against the Boks in Perth. The same pundits seem very quiet about Hooper’s obstruction and the subsequent disallowed try against the Pumas.
Horwill made little impact for his 20 minutes with 5 tackles at 71% and not much else.
Higgers had even less impact for his 31 minutes with 2 tackles at 67% and a single Carry with nil gain.
Beal appeared lost and out of touch for his 28 minutes on the field.
Hodgson laid on more tackles (3 @ 100%) than either Higgers, Carter, Fardy, Slipper, TPN or Kepu (and 2 less than Simmons) and he only played for 11 minutes and once again earned a critical turn-over which resulted in 3 points. He continues to show why he was the form No 7 in Super XV in 2014.
IMO more changes are necessary and inevitable if there is really a desire to prepare for next year’s RWC.
One of these changes should be to select a more mature Captain and let Hooper focus on his own game as my impression is that the burden of leadership is starting to get to him. He is not managing the refs at all well.