{"id":946343,"date":"2026-10-30T12:10:18","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T12:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/946343\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T12:10:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T12:10:18","slug":"exeters-tom-hooper-sometimes-youve-just-got-to-suck-up-a-little-bit-of-pain-exeter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/946343\/","title":{"rendered":"Exeter\u2019s Tom Hooper: \u2018Sometimes you\u2019ve just got to suck up a little bit of pain\u2019 | Exeter"},"content":{"rendered":"

The list of Australian rugby players who have found a spiritual home in Exeter<\/a> is a long and illustrious one. Dean Mumm, Dave Dennis, Nic White, Scott Sio, Greg Holmes, Julian Salvi, Ben White, Mitch Lees, Lachie Turner, Len Ikitau \u2026 almost without exception they have pitched up in the south-west of England and relished the experience. As Rob Baxter, Exeter\u2019s director of rugby, drily observes: \u201cThey seem to like the pasties and the cider.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps the surfing opportunities and the area\u2019s beguiling beaches have also played their part, although Baxter has his own subtly different theory. \u201cMaybe Exeter and Devon is more like Australia than anywhere else in England. There\u2019s plenty of open space and we tend to be a relatively old-school type of club. The Australian guys really seem to like that environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

None more so, it seems, than Tom Hooper, the club\u2019s current resident Wallaby who is hoping to upset England next week. Hooper hails from cattle farming stock in rural New South Wales and while not a cider drinker \u2013 \u201cI love Guinness\u201d \u2013 the personable forward is a country boy to the tips of his beaten-up toes. \u201cI was always going to be a meat eater, that\u2019s for sure,\u201d says the 25-year-old, reflecting on his sizeable childhood appetite growing up near Bathurst in New South Wales. \u201cGetting tucked into the sausage sizzle with my little brother at our local rugby club was always a good way to get our fill.\u201d<\/p>\n

Any misplaced worries before he arrived in Exeter a year ago have also long since vanished. \u201cI\u2019ll be honest, when I first came here I thought the international players were going to be wankers. But they weren\u2019t at all \u2026 they were the loveliest, most humble guys. You feel so welcomed in this environment. And the other thing I\u2019ll say is that the British weather\u2019s not that bad. You can deal with it. It\u2019s only one or two months of the year. I\u2019ve only had one winter, though. I\u2019ll see how this one goes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Exeter\u2019s Tom Hooper in action against Newcastle Red Bulls earlier this month. Photograph: Matt Impey\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

It emerges, though, that Hooper is not quite as 100% \u201cStrine\u201d as he sounds. \u201cMy family heritage is actually Cornish. Way, way back before we get sent out on the boats.\u201d He has certainly been enjoying the tors of Dartmoor and the coastal life so far. \u201cI go free diving a little bit with a few of the boys.\u201d Where exactly? \u201cI can\u2019t let you know my diving spot, mate. But there\u2019s plenty of places; the whole coastline is absolutely beautiful.\u201d So presumably he is living in an idyllic thatched cottage in the middle of nowhere? \u201cNah, I thought that\u2019s where I was going to be but I\u2019m right in the centre of town. I\u2019ve got a landlord \u2013 I call him Granddad \u2013 who looks after me.\u201d<\/p>\n

This most friendly of antipodean giants, however, is very much here for the rugby. Few top players worldwide have stacked up more games across both hemispheres in the past couple of years and the Chiefs could not wish for a more wholehearted recruit. Even a fractured shoulder blade against Ireland last July and multiple long-haul flights have failed to dilute his enthusiasm. \u201cSpending a little bit of time in rehab was a blessing in disguise. It gave me a little bit of time off to strengthen the rig and get back into it over here.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people allude to how much rugby I play but if I look back to 12-year-old Tommy Hooper running around for Bathurst Bulldogs, he\u2019d be pretty happy playing 30 games [a year] as a professional rugby player. Sometimes you just gotta suck up a little bit of pain and push through\u00a0it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which is the sort of can-do attitude every coach respects. The 125kg, 6ft 6in Hooper has won 25 caps for the Wallabies and found it hard when they recently faced New Zealand without him: \u201cIt\u2019s strange watching when I\u2019m not injured. We had training at the same time as the game so I was trying not to see the score. Then I walked into Sandy Park, turned right into the brekkie room and the score was on the telly. I think I let out a few profanities. The boys knew I wasn\u2019t happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

He remains adamant nevertheless that Australia, injuries permitting, can be a threat when they host next year\u2019s Rugby World Cup. \u201cOur squad on paper is looking really strong for that World Cup. Then it\u2019s just about having an individual onus on work rate and doing your job for the team.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the Wallaby back row, whether that\u2019s the starters or the finishers, are bringing that in spades. And if we can get front-foot ball we\u2019ve got some electric guys out wide. Get everyone on the field and firing and I think we\u2019ll go a long way. It would be great to bring a buzz for the sport back into our nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Much the same, he agrees, could be said about England. He particularly rates Tom Curry \u2013 \u201cThe work he does off the ball is really underrated\u201d \u2013 while his good friend Josh Kemeny at Northampton \u2013 \u201cI hear a lot from him about how their team works\u201d \u2013 has been educating him about Henry Pollock and others. \u201cI think England are very similar to Australia in terms of the squad depth they possess. When everyone\u2019s fit they can be one of the best teams in the world. So, yeah, it\u2019s an exciting prospect to be facing them first off.\u201d<\/p>\n

England, for their part, may yet bump into a second Hooper one day. His 22-year-old younger brother Lachie is highly rated \u2013 \u201cHe\u2019s an absolute freak, he will be better than me\u201d \u2013 and Tom says both aspire to be positive role models for country boys everywhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved my time growing up in the country \u2026 it teaches you a lot of good values. When I go back to Australia, it\u2019s quite often the country kids who say \u2018please\u2019 and \u2018thank you\u2019. They\u2019re often the ones I give my pair of boots to after the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

And every time he lines up to sing Advance Australia Fair, he also feels a swelling sense of gratitude. \u201cRugby\u2019s just been so intertwined in our life. You know, Mum and Dad met at a rugby field and Dad coached us all the way up through juniors. Then when we moved to Canberra they were on the road to watch us. I even met my partner on a rugby field \u2026 she was playing for the Brumbies\u2019 women\u2019s team at the\u00a0time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis sport has given me so much and I really want to give back, whether that\u2019s to my team or future generations of country kids like me. I think I\u2019ve got a duty to do that \u2013 and, hopefully, rugby\u2019s got a bit more to give me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The list of Australian rugby players who have found a spiritual home in Exeter is a long and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":946344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,85],"class_list":["post-946343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946343","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=946343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/946344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=946343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=946343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=946343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}