Henson said: “I think it could be the start of a really good partnership and it would keep opposition defences guessing. He’s a natural rugby player, it helps in these sort of arenas, because your instinct takes over. He just looks like he has played international rugby far longer than me.”
Welsh coach Gareth Jenkins described his team as an ‘incentive’ selection, with the onus on the players to prove they are worthy of keeping their places to face New Zealand on November 25th. Henson admits the pressure is on: “We won’t take Canada lightly and we have the incentive of trying to keep our places for the following week against New Zealand.”
Hook will take Wales’s kicks at goal and Henson says he will only take over the responsibility for the long-range attempts if he is asked.
Henson said: “If James is confident and kicking well, I’ll leave him to carry on, there will be no need for me to get involved. I’ll only offer if he is struggling with the distance. I know what it’s like when you are first choice kicker and you are sharing it with someone and they come up and say ‘I’m having this one’; you don’t like that as a kicker.”
Henson says he has only got to know Hook since the 21-year-old joined the Ospreys in the summer and he felt some sympathy for him when he replaced Stephen Jones after just 20 minutes of Wales’s draw with Australia.
For Henson, Hook’s early introduction stirred up memories of a horror return from injury when he came off the bench to replace Jones in the early stages of Wales’s 31-5 defeat in Dublin last February and had a torrid afternoon.
He said: “I could sympathise with how he might have been feeling, because it happened to me 12 months before with the Ireland game. “But he was fine and he didn’t need much help, because he knew everything anyway.”
