THERE’S A RUNNING theme to Michael Cheika’s coaching career to date.
Over 10 years at the top level, the 48-year-old has tended to crash in on a big name side at a low ebb and set about heaving them to the top.
The names on his CV were big clubs when he arrived, but not because of an illustrious history or the players at their disposal. They were established powers with a big city (if not the capital) base. Traditionally, such places have proven frustrating environments for coaches who like to build on a culture of distraction-free hard work.
Yet Cheika has made that his speciality.
“A lot of people had said it was a poisoned chalice, very much like when I went to Leinster,” he said after taking the reins back home with the Waratahs, “but I like the idea of a challenge.”
The thrill of the chase and the risk has yielded plenty of reward. Cheika has the unique accolade of being a club champion coach in two hemispheres after travelling similar roads to glory with Leinster (2009) and the Waratahs (2014). Now he’s one game away from the William Webb Ellis Cup. As a World Champion, who would have the medals to contest his claim to being the best coach in the professional era?
The five-year gap between the trophies in Dublin and Sydney were a mix of hard slogging and a failure to impose his methods and ethos upon Stade Francais. The Parisiennes, it seems, just didn’t fancy the Cheika way.
Suitably burned by that experience, the multi-lingual youngest son of Lebanese immigrants, made sure to warn the blazers in New South Wales and then the ARU that the man they were approaching in their hour of need would not be the friendly face of failure. The Cheika way is not for the mild mannered or the feint of heart.
The Courier Mail reported that he took to personally calling up supporters with grievances about the Tahs’ teething problems. Whether the complaints related to the handling skills of players, the gameplan or the equipment used around the paddock, Cheika wanted the feedback and wanted to improve.
A row with a South African cameraman, a damaged Brumbies door and two seasons later, he was basking in the baby blue glory of the Waratahs’ Super Rugby final success over Crusaders. Getting another one over on some of the greatest All Blacks ever to wear a silver fern would be the sweetest win of all.
Yet, his current role and exploits in England these past six weeks probably shares more in common with the feats he accomplished at Leinster than the rapid improvement in Sydney.
Leinster, infamously, were branded as ‘Ladyboys’ in the early years under Cheika and David Knox. By the time he left for Paris, he had burned the label to ash; aided in no small part by the return of Leo Cullen, Shane Jennings and the arrival of forwards coach Jono Gibbes.
This is perhaps Cheika’s greatest strength, the ability to identify the expertise needed to really coat his team in armour. The 2015 embodiment of Gibbes is the Wallabies’ new scrum coach, Mario Ledesma. The Puma legend cut his teeth as Cheika’s forwards coach at Stade, but the immediate impact he has made since being coated in a green and gold tracksuit in July has been truly remarkable.
Today marks exactly 53 weeks since Cheika took over as Wallabies coach. In 12 short months he has managed to make a mockery of all the four-year plan guff that normally swirls around teams with aspirations (or at least a history) of competing for the World Cup.
Ewen McKenzie, a superb coach, departed the Wallabies disgrace. And many players seemed to be intent on earning the same label a year on from getting battered on home soil by the Lions. Cheika took over the team just in time to preside over November defeats to Ireland and England. But with a clear aim of turning the perception of Australia as having a weak pack – which can do harm however inaccurate the perception was – on its head.
Yes, the Wallabies still thrive on wide open spaces, but they work extremely hard to create that space. What the Sydney Morning Herald’s Spiro Zavos calls ‘CheikHit’ sums up the coach’s style: It’s basics combined with brilliance – physicality first. Win the contact and use the blessed skill-set of David Pocock and Michael Hooper as a twin-barrelled breakdown machine.
Cheika and attack coach Steven Larkham have used that base to devastating effect in the wins over England and Argentina already. Now one game from glory, Cheika has given the Wallabies the tools to shock their neighbours from across the ditch and make him the most impressively decorated coach on the planet.
