One of the central planks of Bath’s renaissance often goes unnoticed. Even in a Twickenham final week, amid the splendour of the club’s manor house HQ in Farleigh Hungerford, surprisingly few choose to seek him out. “Anyone want to speak to Stuart Hooper?” asks a plucky press officer, sticking her head around the door of the music room: this is Bath, remember. Her audience, their notebooks already full of quotes from Kyle Eastmond and Jonathan Joseph, fall guiltily silent. Their editors will always find space for a “Slammin” Sam Burgess story but good old Stuart not so much.
Too many are missing the bigger picture. Hooper was working towards such days long before Burgess arrived. As the club’s captain since 2011, Hooper has seen such respected coaches as Sir Ian McGeechan and Gary Gold come and go. Even Bruce Craig, whose millions have funded the grandest of rugby designs, and Mike Ford, the head coach, are marginally less qualified to pinpoint why the team are back tilting for a Premiership title.
It was Hooper – described by Ford as “the best captain I have ever worked with” – who spoke powerfully in favour of a change of culture two years ago when the wisdom of Craig’s investment was looking rather shakier. “We decided to have this reconnection with what Bath are all about. Not what we think we’re about but actually looking back at history, at the pillars of our existence.”
In Bath’s case that meant talking to old coaches and players – among them Jack Rowell, David Trick and Lee Mears – as well as supporters to identify what made the club special.
Aside from great players, two recurring themes emerged: an attacking style of rugby and a player-led environment. Hooper concedes the club had drifted away from what people loved most. “The identity of the club had not been paid a huge amount of attention. Ian McGeechan has been a hugely successful coach with the Lions and he brought the Geech way, as you would. Gary had been successful with the Springboks but all the time I knew what Bath was all about. I’d seen it as a kid. I guess the reality is that for a couple of years we went away from that and weren’t true to the identity of the club.”
Reinventing golden-era Bath with a modern twist has meant delegating more influence to the players, with Hooper and his fly-half George Ford the primary go-betweens. “Jack Rowell was way ahead of his time,” nods the 33-year-old Hooper. “Our coaches do as much, if not more, than any in the Premiership but they don’t come to a meeting and fire it all at us. If you read any coaching manual it says players are the ones who make decisions on the field. We took a conscious decision to live that. Someone like José Mourinho is a fantastic motivator but in rugby it’s not quite like that. There needs to be something deeper, a higher purpose.”
That “higher purpose” is now fuelling the kind of positive, instinctive rugby that Stuart Barnes, Jeremy Guscott and Simon Halliday used to specialise in. Hooper, as any self-respecting lock should, emphasises it is not only about a few whizzy backs. “People assume the word attack means running from everywhere but, in reality, it means asserting yourself on the opposition. We let it flow through everything we do. When we first came to Farleigh a small group of us were ushered into the music room. Bruce introduced himself as the new owner of Bath and said: ‘This is your new home.’ Bruce is a tremendously successful businessman but he doesn’t stand still – and that’s rubbed off on us. Every day we come to training we want to be the best we can be. You can’t just expect it to happen.”
Loyal Bath supporters may be interested to hear Stuart Lancaster has also played a significant part in their side’s resurgence. Hooper and England’s current head coach worked together at Leeds a decade ago and have a shared interest in team-building that still endures. The culture Hooper has fostered at Bath – such as insisting on a team dinner before big games in the main hall at Farleigh House – largely mirrors Lancaster’s approach with the national squad. “Even now we speak all the time,” reveals Hooper. “It must be quite good for him because he can get a player’s perspective of the club game. He’s massively interested in what players are like off the field.
Hooper also owes a debt to Saturday’s opponents Saracens, where he began his professional career. During the era of Francois Pienaar and Wayne Shelford he captained the club in Europe – the dressing room included such players as Paul Wallace, Abdel Benazzi, Christian Califano and Thomas Castaignède – while still a teenager. Mixing with galácticos gave him an insight, among other things, into how to handle players when a high-profile figure such as Burgess is parachuted in over their heads. “It’s fine to ask: ‘What can I do to get back in the team?’ But if they’re moaning and grumbling, that’s when I’d have to step in.”
The ego-free Hooper has always had a strong work ethic, having watched his father – who spent the last 10 of his 35 years in the police force operating for special branch in Exeter – and mother, a classroom assistant, painstakingly build the family home in Cheriton Fitzpaine near Crediton. “Dad basically built our whole house in the evenings after work. At weekends they’d both work on the house. It was a labour of love but I took a lot from it. Keep your head down, keep working and good times will come.”
All of which explains why Bath think they have the best skipper around. Peter Stringer, who spent years listening to Paul O’Connell in Munster and Ireland dressing rooms, rates the clarity of Hooper’s team talks particularly highly. “He is a guy you would want in your team every day of the week because of his knowledge of the game and his ability to get the best out of guys. He really is one of the best I’ve come across.”
Will it all be enough, however, to earn Bath’s first league title – staggeringly – since 1996? Saracens have won nine of their past 10 Premiership games against Bath and Jacques Burger and Brad Barritt are expert human barricades. Hooper, whose wife is expecting their fourth child in July, will also cite the 2005 Powergen Cup final, when he played against Bath for Leeds.
“As we drove to Twickenham and looked out of the window everything was blue, black and white. It was Bath’s 13th cup final at Twickenham and they’d never lost.” Against all the odds Leeds won 20-12. Saturday will be tense but Bath have the surest of hands on the tiller.
