Receiving the James Hook seal of approval after a debut performance is no bad way for a young player to start his professional career.
We are talking major understatement there.
But Iestyn Hopkins deserved to have his first full appearance in professional rugby signed off by one of the Welsh game’s classiest players of the past 20 years, with Hook watching a clip of the young full-back stepping through the Benetton defence and saying on BBC’s Scrum V programme: “This is what the paying supporter pays to watch, surely.”
