An honest Michael Hooper has detailed the struggles of making the transition from 15s to sevens, as the Wallabies great enters the final stretch of a nine-month sprint to make the Paris Olympics.
With time fast running out before Australia coach John Manenti names the 12-man squad that will compete at Stade de France in July, Hooper has only a tick over an hour's worth of competitive sevens play under his belt, with his transition thwarted by injury.
After first injuring his Achilles in training, which kept him out of events in Perth, Vancouver and Los Angeles, Hooper has now been sidelined by a bout of osteitis pubis, which ruled him out of this weekend's SVNS Grand Final in Madrid.
"[It's] progressing really well. I was training, but I was having a lot of trouble sleeping, the pain is quite significant through the pelvis region, so the idea was to miss this one [Madrid] and try and resolve that," Hooper told reporters on Wednesday.
"And I've run the last three [training] days; Saturday, Monday, today [Wednesday]; and that's alright, so we'll see how that progresses. And then I can try and lift the intensity, because truth be told, I need to lift the intensity, I'm not knocking out of the park when it comes to how it's going on the field.
"So I need to bridge a bit of gap to make this team because the team is pretty settled, the team is going well. Attack-wise, I feel like I'm really getting a good hold of it; skill-wise, I'm getting some of the nuances of the skill; defensively, it's been different, like you are one-on-one with speedsters all the time, under fatigue, and the way that the ball moves is different. So I've just got to get on the field, but we're running out of time for that."
While moving from sevens to 15 is not without its hurdles, it does not typically throw up as many challenges as those a player making the opposite transition typically faces, particularly one with Hooper's vast body of 15s work.
While France star Antoine Dupont, who will play in Madrid this weekend after lifting the European Champions Cup with Toulouse last Sunday, may prove to be an incredible exception, the physiological and tactical changes a player must embrace represent a significant barrier.
Despite a succession of injuries, Hooper feels as though he has a handle on the fitness required to complete a full three days of sevens action - as it will be in Paris at the Olympics - but admits he is still navigating his way through the strategy of sevens.
"Physically, like rugby 15s is hard, you have to build this body of work, like you're making 20 tackles a game or you're running six or seven [kms] a game, playing 80 minutes, and it's week to week," he explained. "Here it's like, I played 19 minutes in Hong Kong or I played 45 in Singapore over the course of three days, but two games a day, which means two warm-ups, cool-downs, go to sleep, do it all again, do it all again.
"But it's the nuance of the game, so the way the ball moves and breaking my intuition behind playing 15s. My intuition is to chase the ball, be around the ball; you're in the contact, you're in attack and you're coming off the nine's hip or the 10 or you're creating the extra man. In this game I do that and I kill the team, so I chase too hard into a ruck and I'm the third man around a ruck, then it leaves four of us to d-hold [defend] the whole pitch, and that's going to impact the whole team.
"So really that's what I noticed when I played in Hong Kong and three quarters of Singapore, I came onto the field and it's like 'this is footy', and it's not that, and that hasn't been -- and this is my words and no-one else's -- that hasn't been super helpful for the team at times. At times, yeah, I've gotten a turnover, whatever, and that's been beneficial. But you do that against the wrong team, or you do that in the wrong time, I'm going to hurt the team."
And this is where the frustration really hits home for Hooper. After getting through those tournaments in Asia, and picking up some invaluable lessons on the way, the former Wallabies captain could feel the adjustments occurring.
Then came the osteitis pubis.
"I do, I do [feel like it's about to click] and that's been a little bit of the frustration around the time of the year that I got everything together. The Achilles injury is probably annoying now looking back because I probably would have had Perth, I would have had Vancouver, LA, so maybe two or three tournaments extra, which means an extra two or three months' of training, whereas really I've started training with the team early April... so the runway's been short.
"And it's a hard game, my respect and belief of what you have to do to be a good sevens player has completely changed, it's a really really hard game to get."
Still, Hooper remains optimistic he can earn Olympic selection, with Australia to have one final hit-out in Fiji before Manenti settles on his squad for the Games.
But if it doesn't turn out to be that Hooper gets an Olympic swansong, then he will hold no grudges nor enter the next phase of his life with any overarching disappointment.
"Absolute cherry on top. I never thought I'd go to an Olympics, it was never a goal in my mind - the World Cup was [a goal] last year," he said. "And then you switch to 'okay, well you could go to an Olympics', and then you start reading into it and talking to people who have been or seeing the stories of being a part of that, and that really ignites a bit of a fire.
"But it's a cherry on top. So if I get there and it happens, so be it great, I'll be really pumped, and I'll do everything I can, but if it doesn't then I'm proud of myself that I gave a tough game a crack."