The time has come: Michael Cheika must go immediately

The time for plain-speaking has finally arrived. Michael Cheika must go as Wallabies coach and immediately.

Wallabies coach Michael Cheika watches his players warm-up at Twickenham early yesterday. Picture: AP

The time for plain speaking has arrived. Michael Cheika must go as Wallabies coach and immediately. He will depart with Australian rugby’s thanks but he has run his race and to attempt to cobble together a rescue package built around him now would effectively sacrifice next year’s World Cup.

Australia are returning from the European spring tour with one win and two losses, after yet another hiding from the All Blacks in Yokohama. There have been four wins out of 13 this calendar year and commentators from Steve Hansen to Stuart Barnes are openly ridiculing the Wallabies.

I have been reluctant to jump on the “Cheika must go” bandwagon. When ESPN’s Greg Growden lobbed the first grenade following the initial Bledisloe Cup defeat, I believed it was too early by half to consider sacking him. Wait until other nations have played the All Blacks, I argued, believing that if New Zealand wiped the floor with everyone else, some grudging respect might come the Wallabies’ way.

But instead, the Springboks beat the men in black, so too Ireland and England were denied by a point — although after watching Owen Farrell get away with another critical shoulder charge against Australia early yesterday, I’m without sympathy for them. It quickly became evident the All Blacks weren’t half as good as a poorly coached Wallabies side were making them appear.

Had Cheika rediscovered the art of coaching in the interim, the story now might be markedly different. But in fact he has become progressively worse and the events of recent days have laid bare how bankrupt of ideas he and his fellow coaches have become. The critical moment was when he told me that he had considered bringing Kurtley Beale into the reserves after David Pocock was ruled out of the Test on Friday morning — this, despite having already suspended him from the Test side after he and Adam Ashley-Cooper had broken team protocols by inviting women back to their hotel room.

In the end, sanity prevailed. But the reasoning behind reinstating Beale — who, by the by, has been hopelessly out of form anyway, regardless of his off-field activities — exposed a mind that was utterly muddled. Cheika’s own self-appointed team leaders had obviously mulled over the question of what to do with the two players and — at the cost of being derided as “snitches” by England yesterday — had finally approached Cheika to maintain team standards. The mere fact he then believed he could then undo Beale’s suspension because of convenience is jaw-dropping.

There are still many questions that remain unanswered about this incident. Cheika spoke about “fessing up” because he intends to be transparent but he only reluctantly answered questions about it when approached by The Australian. He hadn’t publicly named and shamed the pair — astonishingly, Cheika had brought in AAC at the age of 34 to help raise the standards of the Wallabies — and even when he took disciplinary action, he kept it concealed from the public.

Which begs the question how much else the Wallabies have buried. One wonders how much even Rugby Australia is being told. What did they know about this episode and, more important, when did they know it?

RA CEO Raelene Castle and high performance boss Ben Whitaker have been in Europe during the recent debacles although, frankly, Whitaker is too closely tied to the problem to know help solve it. The hope was that they might get away with tinkering with the system, bringing in some new assistant coaches and slowly getting reform under way before the World Cup. But if Cheika is not inclined to accept advice from people he has brought in himself, he is hardly going to listen to help imposed on him.

No doubt it will cost RA a pretty penny to pay out his contract but after saving an estimated $6 million a year by culling the Western Force, it should be able to cough up.

The Australian rugby public deserves to head into the New Year with hope that the Wallabies can claw their way back.

Following the weekend’s results — Wales beat the Springboks and Fiji, riding the Drua combination hard, defeated France — it’s questionable at present whether the Wallabies will even make it out of their pool.

My solution: bring in John Connolly as interim head coach through to the World Cup.

Yes, he is a friend of mine but that should hardly disqualify him. His name is being discussed at the highest levels and with every long-term coach already under contract, he is the standout in a limited field of coaches with the experience and the vision to take the Wallabies through to the World Cup, when a permanent coach can then be appointed.

He enjoyed a 64 per cent winning ratio with the Wallabies, the second highest win rate during the professional era, and at the time he was dumped as national coach he had won 10 out of 13 as opposed to Cheika’s 9 defeats out of 13 this season. Connolly’s side were beaten in the 2007 World Cup quarter-finals by England solely because of a defective Wallabies scrum bequeathed to him by Eddie Jones, yet even so, Stirling Mortlock still had a kick to win the match.

What’s not known is that the Australian rugby media, meeting for drinks on the eve of that match, had taken a collective decision to come out publicly in support of Connolly continuing in the job, though John O’Neill was angling for Robbie Deans.

Only one thing more was required to begin the press blitz: the Wallabies had to beat England the following day.

No doubt questions will be asked whether Connolly, 67, is up to date with the modern game. For that, I suggest the doubters listen to the Fox Sports podcast Connolly did recently with Christy Doran and Sam Worthington.

He clinically dissects the Wallabies and their woes and comes up with a checklist of things they need to work on. Connolly has his faults but he clearly has turned one of the best rugby brains Australia has ever produced to the Wallabies and their problems.

Even during the short coaching stint he had with the Queensland Reds in 2015, he proved it was possible to turn a side around. Will Genia wrote to him afterwards thanking him for how he had helped clarify the game plan. Think back to yesterday … those three critical left-to-right passes that went astray were evidence not of a side short on ability but of one lacking clarity and precision.

The fate of Australian rugby rests in the hands of Cameron Clyne, Castle and their fellow board members.