Michael Hooper has backed \u201camazing leader of men\u201d Dave Rennie to mould a New Zealand team that is a \u201creal problem\u201d for its rivals at next year\u2019s Rugby World Cup in Australia.<\/p>\n
Appointed in March following the sacking of Scott Robertson, Rennie experienced mixed fortunes in combination with captain Hooper during three years bossing Australia before his dismissal in January 2023.<\/p>\n
Eddie Jones replaced Rennie and omitted Hooper from Australia\u2019s 2023 World Cup squad, essentially ending the flanker\u2019s 11-year, 125-cap international career.<\/p>\n
\u201cDave is an amazing coach and leader of men, and he deserves to take a Tier 1 team to a World Cup,\u201d Hooper told the South China Morning Post.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would have been great if it had been us, but I\u2019m very happy for him. It means New Zealand are going to be very dangerous in the World Cup, they\u2019ll be a real problem for all the teams they face.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hooper was in the last Australia team to reach a World Cup final in 2015 when they were beaten by New Zealand. The job of leading the Wallabies in their home tournament next year, when they will attempt to end a 28-year wait to be world champions, will fall to current Queensland Reds head coach Les Kiss, who is poised to replace incumbent Joe Schmidt following three Nations Championship tests in July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Hooper has backed \u201camazing leader of men\u201d Dave Rennie to mould a New Zealand team that is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654629,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,316587,36452,228143,28588,3739,1381,92253,55831,316588,1736,49419,760,15131,28765,85,2500],"class_list":["post-654628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-rugby-union","tag-cathay-hsbc-hong-kong-sevens","tag-dave-rennie","tag-eddie-jones","tag-fiji","tag-joe-schmidt","tag-les-kiss","tag-michael-cheika","tag-michael-hooper","tag-new-zealand","tag-paris-olympics","tag-rugby","tag-rugby-world-cup","tag-south-china-morning-post","tag-sports","tag-wallabies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}