The list of Australians moving to Sandy Park is long and distinguished. <\/p>\n
Players including Dean Mumm, Dave Dennis, Greg Holmes, Lachie Turner and Nic White have all shone in Devon.<\/p>\n
Former Australia, and now Samoa prop Scott Sio, was on hand to give Hooper some insight in his fourth season at Exeter while scrum-half White, who spent two-and-a-half seasons at the Chiefs also provided him with important counsel.<\/p>\n
“He was always speaking very highly of this place,” Hooper says of White, who he first played alongside as a teenager with Super Rugby’s Brumbies in 2021.<\/p>\n
“So it was always kind of on the wish list, on the bucket list to try and tick off playing here at some stage.<\/p>\n
“I actually didn’t think it was going to be so early in my career, but I’m so blessed that they came looking for me and I just knew it was a pretty easy answer once a few things got aligned.”<\/p>\n
And now he is in England he is getting used to a highly competitive Prem Rugby season. <\/p>\n
Exeter are third at the midway stage of the campaign with 50% more wins than their entire total last season when they finished second-from-bottom. <\/p>\n
“I knew it was a quality competition and I wanted to better myself as an individual and as a rugby player,” he said. <\/p>\n
“Coming here, not just the ferocity of the games on the field, but I guess the challenges off field in terms of improving myself as an athlete in the gym, on the training park, it’s been great.<\/p>\n
“I’ve loved how everyone goes about their business over here, whether that’s us or our competition that we’re facing.<\/p>\n
“I’m loving the standard that it’s forcing me to rise to.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The list of Australians moving to Sandy Park is long and distinguished. Players including Dean Mumm, Dave Dennis,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-373278","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}