Michael Cheika enjoying the ‘now’ as Wallabies reassemble

Michael Cheika can’t understand why so many people, including his players, have such an obsession with taking “selfies”.

Starters.

Michael Cheika can’t understand why so many people, including a fair swag of his own players, have such an obsession with taking “selfies”.

“You’re at a ‘thing’ and everybody wants to take a photo of it instead of just enjoying the moment,” he said recently. “I don’t want to take a photo of it or take a video of it and post it. I just want to do it and enjoy it. Enjoy the now.”

That’s exactly what the Australian coach has been doing this past week. All the frustrations of the past three months when, for basically the first time this century he didn’t have a side to coach, have fallen away.

The Wallabies are back together, 21 of them from the almost-successful World Cup campaign, plus a dozen newcomers or old faithfuls like James Horwill, Sam Carter or Christian Lealiifano. Hey, quick, someone take a photo!

The question is, now, what is he going to do with them? Cheika has had a couple of team-free months where he has had the chance to turn his mind to this question but the reality is that there are only so many ways rugby can be reinvented.

The basics never change — good scrum, good lineout, getting over the advantage line, good defence and ferocity at the tackle contest. A good coach can do a lot with those basics, as Cheika demonstrated last September-October in Britain.

Besides, there is only so much reinventing to do. Having taken over in October 2014 from Ewen McKenzie, Cheika has only had the spring tour that year plus 12 matches last year to impose his style on the team.

Now he is up against the one coach in world rugby who knows the value of repetition — just ask the Japanese players how many endless simulations Jones put them through before they ultimately played the Springboks at the World Cup — and Cheika would be conscious the one thing he hasn’t had time to do with the Wallabies is to shout “again … again …. again”.

Beyond that, there is only the tinkering that can be done with changed personnel and, frankly, I can’t see Cheika making any more changes than are necessary.

He places a huge store in loyalty and he will keep the faith with the players who kept the faith with him by taking Australia to the World Cup final.

That’s not to say there won’t be some tweaking of World Cup teammates. Cheika will want to see how tighthead prop Sekope Kepu has returned from France, and not just in terms of whether he has recovered from the shoulder injury that has kept him out in recent weeks. Eddie Jones was right when he said that playing in France, especially for a prop, can be a good thing or a bad thing.

Cheika, too, is mindful of this, having coached at Stade Francais in his time, and while he believes Kepu overcame a shaky start to perform well for Bordeaux, he will want to see some early evidence of that in training.

If he has reservations, he will go immediately to Greg Holmes. He might lack Kepu’s leg drive in general play but Holmes has been a rock for the Queensland Reds at scrum time and whoever plays tighthead for Australia on Saturday night at Suncorp will be judged on his scrummaging first, second and third before any other element of his play is considered.

There is, too, some flexibility at loosehead. Scott Sio is the incumbent and has done little wrong this year. The issue for Cheika to resolve is whether James Slipper has done enough to displace him. Incumbency gives Sio the edge but this is one position that could go either way.

Rod Simmons will be the tighthead lock, which means the only real selection issue in the entire pack is finding a replacement for Kane Douglas. James Horwill is perhaps the best like-for-like replacement for Douglas but he has barely used Sam Carter at all since the 2014 spring tour — aside from the pre-World Cup USA Test where he came on as a number eight — and now might be a good time to reactivate him.

The backrow, for all the speculation, won’t be changed. David Pocock, Michael Hooper and Scott Fardy were, overall, the best backrow of the World Cup although, come the final, the All Blacks largely negated them. That will have given the rest of the world a template to work off but, for all their ambitions, England aren’t the All Blacks — yet — and the backrow still looms as an advantage for Australia. And that’s without any refinements that Cheika might have worked on.

With Will Genia not recalled from France, Nick Phipps and Bernard Foley will be the halves for Australia. But the real selection hotspot will be the centre pairing, where only Tevita Kuridrani remains from last year’s midfield pairing. Matt Giteau might return to reinforce the side during the Rugby Championship, but for now Samu Kerevi appeals as the player most likely to partner Kuridrani.

Israel Folau and Rob Horne have been rated midfield contenders but they surely will be needed at fullback and wing respectively, which leaves the 12 jersey being tugged at by Kerevi, Lealiifano, Karmichael Hunt and Rebels newcomer Reece Hodge.

It would be asking a lot for Lealiifano to slot straight in after waiting for the birth of his first child in Canberra. Quite simply, his head hasn’t been in the game, nor should it have been.

Hunt would love the challenge of playing, especially if England choose another former Queensland State of Origin player opposite him in Ben Te’o. But he’ll probably be scuttled by the fact the Reds haven’t had the luxury of being able to play him in the position he wants, inside centre. As for Hodge, he is the perfect bench player because he can play so many positions, just as long as he is on the park in the final five minutes in case Australia is given a 60m shot at goal to win the match.

Which leaves Kerevi, whose line breaks and run metres for the Reds make compelling reading, even if they were compiled at outside centre.

That leaves only one wing position to fill. Taqele Naiyarovoro offers real strike power out wide and it is easy to see the attraction but I’m leaning towards either Dane Haylett-Petty or Luke Morahan. If you could bank on Morahan having the game he unleashed for Queensland against the British and Irish Lions, it would be no-contest but that’s not a given. In which case, I’d opt for Haylett-Petty, even though he’s a transplanted fullback. He is unflappable in just about any situation.