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Ireland you’ve been warned, Australian captain Michael Hooper is expecting a vast improvement in performance from his team come Saturday.
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Australia’s 18-9 win over Ireland was their first international since November and with the rust gone Hooper wants to kick on.
“There is so much that we can get better at, sticking to structure is key and relieving pressure was key in that game, but can we get more experimental? Potentially.”
“We need to take it up a level. Both teams are going to improve. They were off long travel last week, probably don’t get into proper sleeping patterns until Wednesday or Thursday and they hadn’t seen us play since November.
“They’ve got a real read on us now, obviously we’ve got a read on them, but it allows you to change up things. We expect them to change up things, different players will bring different threats.”
Ireland have made eight changes the game in Melbourne, one of those is Johnny Sexton and Hooper says his team are full briefed on the Leinster man.
“We prepared for him for the first game. We thought he’d be out there last week.
“We’ve been fully aware of the threat that not only him, but Carbery brought last week. He still got a bit of time at the back end of the game and did some threatening little things. We know that he’s very experienced and I know from playing with experienced players that he’ll have a big impact on the game.”
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Australia picked up a key scrum penalty in the 68th minute of the first Test, but the set piece is still area they’ve looked at.
“Yeah a good amount, a solid amount of time without getting bogged down in it. It is such a huge area. We think we can get better in the scrum and we definitely can get better in the lineout with our sharpness. A couple of things are rust and new things being added that didn’t work to how we would have liked to launch our attacks.”
“If you are doing the same thing you have to raise the bar in how you are doing it. If we are going to kick or if we are going to run it is about doing it and the attention to detail being better and the urgency being a level better than it was last week because they are going to expect it. Everyone is going to be 30cm or a metre closer to the ball because they are assuming it is going to happen. They are under no illusions that these guys are a top team and the players in that team are fantastic. You have to go up a level and not forget about the small things.”
