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Can Cheika avoid suffering the betrayals of McKenzie and Deans?

Roar Guru
20th October, 2014
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Michael Cheika has to go back to the drawing board. (Source: AAP Image/Theron Kirkman)
Roar Guru
20th October, 2014
114
2166 Reads

What is really going to change if Michael Cheika gets the job? We’ve seen two good rugby men, superb coaches with bulletproof credentials, betrayed. And betrayed is not too strong a word.

Robbie Deans and Ewen McKenzie deserved far better. Not just from their players, leadership group and administrators, but from the Australian rugby public too.

The problem is that bulletproof doesn’t seem to mean Wallaby proof. It’s not even Roar proof and it sure isn’t Beale proof.

Close to two years ago, I wrote an article on The Roar supporting Robbie Deans and was widely criticised for it. Many of the arguments put forward to crucify Deans were dubious.

Deans was only the most successful Super Rugby coach of all time and that was someone else’s doing anyway. Deans may have been at the helm when Richie McCaw and Dan Carter were unearthed, but why should he be credited with those finds?

Then the old chestnut was trotted out, Deans doesn’t play the “Australian way”. His game plan was awful. His selections mirrored the game plan. He didn’t have a clue. Allan Jones said so. Even Campo said so. It must be true.

This wasn’t Australian rugby’s fault. There is no culture problem in Australian rugby. Being second best in the world is all down to that dastardly Kiwi Robbie Deans. He is probably a secret agent sent to destroy the game in Australia for good. Dubious indeed.

So we all got want we wanted. Ewen McKenzie with his brand of running rugby and record of turning the Reds into world beaters.

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Here was a man who had played 50 Tests and won a World Cup in 1991. McKenzie won the Bledisloe twice as a player alongside giants of the game. He’d coached the Waratahs to a Super Rugby final and won it with the Reds. He’d been an assistant Wallaby coach in 2003 and even turned down the position in 2007 when he felt unready for it.

Surely, he would be above the petty public ridicule that had doomed Deans. Surely, the players would find it possible to trust his methods and judgment. Sadly, not even McKenzie’s record saved him. Those runs on the board and banked rugby credits didn’t earn him the respect he deserved.

It didn’t stop the rugby public from turning on him 12 months into his reign, despite the fact that just three extra points would have won the Bledisloe this year.

The media still felt able to drag McKenzie’s name through the mud and print innuendo about his relationship with a female staffer. Her treatment by sections of the press borders on the criminal.

Yet it was the players who have the most to be ashamed about. While leaping to the defence of a colleague who has disgraced himself time and again, they felt unable to intervene as McKenzie’s reputation was smeared and systematically dismantled.

The immature defences of Beale by a Wallaby captain and vice-captain, a centurion no less, are hard to stomach. Two better men, say McCaw and Kieran Read, would never have thrown a man like McKenzie to the wolves while cuddling up to a child, and an ungrateful one at that.

What it reeks of is a player coup. Had senior Waratahs already decided that Cheika was their man? Why did Bill Pulver’s spirited defence of McKenzie only come after he’d resigned? Could it be that grudges held since Dublin were finally settled?

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It matters now because this is the playing group Cheika may be inheriting. A fickle, disloyal, overrated bunch of mercenaries capable of turning in a brilliant performance when they feel like it.

There is no doubt Cheika has the credentials. He’s won a European title with Leinster and Super Rugby title with the Waratahs. He is an uncompromising character capable of creating a hard-edged forward pack. Just what the Wallabies need.

The great Brian O’Driscoll holds Cheika in high esteem, no small compliment from a man coached by Graham Henry, Clive Woodward, Ian McGeechan and Warren Gatland. Former Shark, Bull and Springbok Jacques Potgeiter called Cheika the best coach he’d ever had.

But are Cheika’s credentials really all that different to Deans’ and McKenzie’s? Will overindulged players with dubious moral compasses, living off the past achievements of gentlemen like McKenzie, John Eales and Tim Horan not just revert to type.

One thing that Cheika is not, is placid. He does not suffer fools. By all accounts he runs a tight ship, or plane. He apparently also gives rousing pre-game speeches and is not short of passion, or volatility.

Some have questioned whether a Wallabies coach can be volatile. Cheika will indeed need to check himself at times. But it may just be that this quality at least buys him time with the Australian public. It is after all passion and pride that many believe has been missing for too long from the Wallabies.

In any case, Beale and company need a few windows broken in close proximity or to exit stage left through them. Good luck Michael Cheika, you’ll need it.

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