Wallabies coach Michael Cheika quits after team’s World Cup exit
Michael Cheika delivers a parting shot to the chief executive and chairman of Rugby Australia.
True to his word but 24 hours late, Michael Cheika has resigned as Wallabies coach in the aftermath of Australia’s 40-16 drubbing by England in the World Cup quarter-final in Oita on Saturday.
Cheika confirmed on Sunday that he would not seek reappointment when his contract expires on December 31.
He had indicated earlier this year he would stand down if Australia did not win the World Cup and from midway through the first half of the England match it was clear his time had run out. Convention dictated Cheika should have made the announcement straight after the defeat, but he seemed intent on dragging it out.
“When the time comes, I’ll tell them (Rugby Australia),” said Cheika, the first hint that relations between him and chief executive Raelene Castle and chairman Cameron Clyne had turned frosty. “They don’t need to know today. It’s not going to kill them.”
On Sunday he elaborated on how strained those relationships had become. “It is no secret I have no relationship with the CEO (Castle) and not much with the chairman,” he said. “I knew from the final whistle (I would stand down) but I just wanted to give it that little bit of time to cool down, talk to my people and then make it clear.”
Cheika admitted that when he was asked at the post-match press conference what his plans were, he knew he would be resigning.
“I put my chips in earlier in the year. I told people no win, no play. So, I’m the type of man whose always going to back what he says.”
RELATED ARTICLES
Michael Cheika’s brand of rugby had long since been worked out
David Pocock calls it a day but not on political activism
Former Wallabies five-eighth Quade Cooper said on Twitter that if Cheika “actually cared about Aus rugby he would have done it a while ago”.
Castle released a diplomatic statement, thanking Chieka for his service. “On behalf of Rugby Australia, I want to thank Michael for his dedication and service to the role of Wallabies head coach since taking up the position in 2014. Michael is a passionate and experienced coach who worked tirelessly to get the best out of his players.
“He cares deeply about the Wallabies and the game of rugby and always set out with the aim of making Wallabies fans proud of the team’s performance. Michael came into the role at a turbulent time and experienced immediate success by taking the Wallabies to a World Cup final after only one year in the job.”
Now the Wallabies are out of the World Cup, Rugby Australia’s director of rugby Scott Johnson will lead a review of the entire program. For many Australians, the only palatable aspect of the England defeat was that it would bring an end to the Cheika era and in deference to the five years he has spent in the job Castle was prepared to give him some time.
Some time, perhaps, but certainly no slack. She scarcely entertained the notion of whether Cheika might extend his contract out beyond December 31.
One senses that the Castle administration actually began on Saturday, not when she moved into the position on January 15, 2018. She quickly came to realise that Australian rugby was so tightly in the grip of Cheika – who had negotiated his terms at a time when her predecessor, Bill Pulver, had run out of alternatives – that she would risk everything if she challenged him openly.
That all changed with the Wallabies’ defeat and she now has some room to make the changes she believes are necessary, but she will drag the dead weight of Cheika behind her for some time. She oversaw the process last November that decided to keep him on for the World Cup, when the advice from many rugby experts was that he was incapable of winning the tournament, and she must carry some of that responsibility.
Right to the end, Cheika was unrepentant, proclaiming the running game to the world even as the flames were licking at his feet.
“Listen, that’s the way we play footy,” Cheika told the post-match press conference. “I’m not going to a kick-and-defend game. Maybe call me naïve but that’s not what I’m going to do. That’s the way Aussies want us to play. That’s it.”
Perhaps had Australia followed the Leinster model and surrounded him with good coaches it might have been different but then again, part of the deal he negotiated when he had Pulver over a barrel was that he be able to choose his own assistants.
They presumably are out of a job along with Cheika but they too have to take some of the blame. All of the problems identified over the past five years, the lack of opportunity to bring on playmakers, the lack of a kicking game, the fatal flaw in halfback Will Genia’s game that saw him take two steps across field before passing, the failure to address the obvious failure of playing Michael Hooper and David Pocock in the same starting side, the gaping holes in Kurtley Beale’s performances, the opportunities around Samu Kerevi that were left unexplored, all of these things were coaching failures.
This panel of coaches has failed a generation of players and when they finish their Test careers, as Pocock and Genia and Sekope Kepu did with the England defeat, they would be entitled to look at their mentors and ask: How good could we have been if you had done your jobs properly?
These systems failures must be addressed, especially if Rugby Australia goes down the path of selecting a foreign coach as they look like doing with Dave Rennie. Australia’s rugby problems cannot be solved simply by making it easier to select players from overseas.
Wallabies gun in demand as NRL reunion looms
Former Melbourne Storm star Suliasi Vunivalu is being chased by multiple NRL clubs, with speculation intensifying that the flying Wallaby is about to make a move away from Australian rugby.
$1m in payments at centre of Rocky Elsom fraud conviction
Documents presented to a criminal court in France detail contentious payments totalling hundreds of thousands of euros made by ex-Wallaby captain Rocky Elsom.