From navigating typhoons in Japan, to planning around a global pandemic, Michelle Hooper talks to the Asia Media Centre about her roles in organising Rugby World Cups – including the 2022 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand – and how the lessons she’s learned in Asia are helping shape her perspective on hosting an international tournament.
Two years ago, when Michelle Hooper was working on the world’s biggest rugby competition, global pandemics didn’t really rate on the risk scale.
The world has changed a lot since then.
In 2019, Hooper was working on the Rugby World Cup in Japan as the team services lead. She was flying over to Japan one week out of four and discussing the risks of typhoons and tsunamis, while navigating the needs of different teams.
Tournament director for the 2021 Rugby World Cup Michelle Hooper. Image: Supplied
Fast forward to 2020, she had been appointed tournament director for the women’s 2021 Rugby World Cup and promptly saw Covid put a halt to planning as the New Zealand-based tournament was postponed. It’s now scheduled for October 8 to November 12, 2022.
“It's interesting, because global pandemics are always on a risk register - it was on the risk register for Japan, the only thing was that it didn't have a high rating,” she says.
In a sport career spanning multiple major international events, Hooper has mainly worked in team services, an area which is all about the heart of any major event – the people.
In Hooper’s case, that’s the athletes.
“They put in their heart and soul, and they’ve dedicated their whole life to the pursuit of getting to a major international tournament. Sometimes they may only ever go to one and that might be their only experience,” she says.
Hooper with Japanese rugby player Ippei Asada during the 2011 Rugby World Cup. Image: Supplied
Hooper works on the edges of competitions to make the experience the best it can be: that means anything from organising welcoming events to considering laundry services logistics and catering to athletes’ diets at their hotels. It even comes down to the conversations athletes have with their bus drivers.
“I've always had this kind of 'incremental inputs add up to the whole' philosophy so that every kind of touchpoint that a team has with somebody on that journey, we should be having input too. Nothing's left to chance,” Hooper says.
The other side of Hooper’s roles mean she has to plan for what could go wrong – in the case of the 2019 Rugby World Cup, that meant expecting natural disasters more common to Japan, like typhoons.
Every time a severe weather event swept through – which did happen – Japanese crews would have to pack down a lot of temporary event structures and then put them back up within a few hours once the weather calmed.
Michelle Hooper. Image: Supplied
“But what you find now on any major international event's risk register is that the global pandemic pretty much takes up three-quarters of the register. The other risks all fall away, because actually what we found with the recent postponement of Rugby World Cup 2021 is that a tournament can't go ahead when you're facing the risks of those global pandemics.
“One thing that is very clear, you can never mitigate the risk of a global pandemic. It's what you do, if it should arise.”
Hooper’s sporting career was sparked when she was a teenager, watching the America’s Cup parade on the streets.
“I went there with my school uniform on and red socks up to my knees, with Peter Blake and the team bringing the Cup back to New Zealand. The feeling was so contagious, it was so incredible. I wanted to be part of that team,” Hooper says.
Since then, she’s held positions at the 2011 Rugby World Cup, commissioned matches at Twickenham for the 2015 Rugby World Cup and was general coordinator at the 2014 FIFA Girls Youth Olympics in Nanjing China.
She’s learned a lot over her time in tournaments and carries lessons from her experiences in Asia which has helped her shape parts of the 2022 Rugby World Cup.
Hooper working at the Nanjing Youth Olympics in 2014. Image: Supplied
“In Japan, the most obvious challenges for me, number one was understanding the culture, understanding how the Japanese work, and then working with them in the way that they want to be worked with.
“I think the number one [lesson] for me is a word: respect. Absolutely respect because people's culture is their mindset. Understanding cultures and being respectful of their needs and wants is always the number one thing for me.”
For now, all attention is focused on 2022 and creating the best space for the Black Ferns to compete on the world stage.
“It was very upsetting to have the postponement news, but the next best thing is confirming the dates for the for the tournament in 2022,” Hooper says.
“The extra rest days for the players - five days between every match is a huge bonus - and it makes the match schedule much better for the tournament from both an athlete point of view and a broadcast point of view. It was good to know that we could supercharge some aspects of the tournament.”
- Asia Media Centre
