Exeter Chiefs face anxious wait over Wallaby Tom Hooper

Exeter Chiefs are sweating on the results of a scan to find out the extent of the knee injury suffered by their Wallaby blindside flanker Tom Hooper in Saturday’s 8-3 defeat to Bristol Bears at Sandy Park.

Hooper, 24, has been outstanding in the 10 games he has played since arriving at Sandy Park from the Brumbies in October, but was injured after only eight minutes when Manny Feyi-Waboso fell into him.

There are now fears that he has suffered damage to his anterior cruciate ligament, which would mean a period of between nine and 12 months on the sidelines, depending on the severity of the injury.

“We lose Tom Hooper early in the game after we make a mistake. Manny misses the catch and gets pushed over onto Tom. We lose one of our best five forwards, and we knock on.

“It’s what I mean by our mistakes hurt us more than Bristol’s mistakes hurt them. It’s his knee, and we will know the level of it once he has had a scan,” said Chiefs boss Rob Baxter in his post-match media conference.

Losing Hooper, who has been capped 22 times by Australia, would be a massive blow to the Chiefs, who have suffered three defeats in the last four in all competitions and are now eight points behind PREM leaders Northampton Saints.

Hooper, like Len Ikitau, had sprinkled his stardust at the Chiefs and the stats since the outside centre was injured against Saracens before Christmas tell an interesting story.

In the five games Ikitau played, they won all five, scoring 176 points, but in the five games without him, they have only won two and scored 109 points.

Meanwhile, Baxter said that Italian international scrum-half Steve Varney, who was recently sidelined with a rib injury, missed the game against the Bears with a groin injury.

“Steve tweaked a groin. He started to feel it early in the week, and it just didn’t clear up in time,” added the Chiefs director of rugby.