ENGLAND FOLLOWERS had seen this play before. With his side struggling badly, Eddie Jones hooks a player after 30 minutes to send a message. It’s bold, it’s brave and it’s ruthless. Think Luther Burrell and Danny Care.
While Jones may have swapped sides from England to the Wallabies, it looked like he’d struck again when debutant flanker Tom Hooper trudged off after half an hour against the Springboks.
He’d missed several tackles in the build-up to Kurt-Lee Arendse’s try and then failed to get hold of Manie Libbok. When he exited Loftus Versfeld, you could have been forgiven for thinking we wouldn’t see young Tom again.
Luckily, it transpired the young buck had a shoulder injury. Nonetheless, it was not the debut he’d dreamt of, but it sure wasn’t going to be his last hurrah.
“It was a dream come true,” he says. “But definitely not a fairytale start. Two days later, it sunk in that I was a Wallaby. The new goal was making sure that it wasn’t
