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I am a diehard Waratahs fan. It therefore goes without saying that I am a huge believer in Michael Cheika and his abilities as a coach, a communicator and a winner.
The rugby the Waratahs played this year to win the 2014 Super Rugby competition was the most expansive, exciting and effective I have seen since the 1999-2003 Wallabies era.
In saying that, I would not be picking Cheika as our next Wallabies coach, and I say this for a variety of reasons.
Cheika has a unique style of expansive, fast-paced rugby, which takes time for players to learn and implement into practice. He is the kind of coach that changes under performing organisations by picking them up by the scruff of their necks and shaking off the cobwebs.
I believe he will be an incredible long-term coach for our national rugby team. However I think he should be hired after next year’s World Cup.
Cheika’s coaching history shows that it takes his teams certain adaptation periods to achieve success. As a result, I believe there simply isn’t enough time from now until the 2015 Rugby World Cup for Cheika to fully shape the Wallabies into the team that can win and win regularly.
In his first major club appointment – Leinster in 2005 – he experienced a Heineken Cup semi-final finish in his first year, Heineken Cup quarter-final finish in his second year, and failed to get out of the group stages in his third year. In fact it wasn’t until 2009 that he led Leinster to become champions of Europe. That took four years for Cheika to transform Leinster into a champion club.
After a failed stint in Paris, he of course guided the Waratahs to victory after two seasons at the helm. We all know about the success and dominance of this year’s season, but his first year in charge in 2013 finished with the Waratahs in ninth place with eight wins and eight losses.
This was a season we had to have no doubt, and in that season Cheika was able to experiment with players, examine depth and learn through trial and error. It also showed that the Waratahs needed more than a year to fully adapt to his coaching methods and then implement his methods into on-field results.
While those achievements are extraordinary, the Wallabies do not have the four years that Leinster had, nor the two years the Waratahs could afford to give. We have 11 months until the Rugby World Cup 2015 kicks off and we need a coach who can walk in and provide the Wallabies and their supporters with immediate success.
We need Jake White.
White has won a World Cup. That alone should be an achievement that sets him apart from Cheika. The difficulty and importance of that single dot point on his resume makes him an impossible candidate to refuse. His 2007 Springboks team focused on having impenetrable defence, direct attack and dominant forward play with territory the vital key to victory.
White left the rugby scene altogether before joining the Brumbies in 2013. He implemented the same style of direct, defensive, territory-based rugby in an extremely short period of time. The result was immediate success and a Brumbies side reaching the Super Rugby grand final via an away semi-final victory against the Bulls. The key here was the immediate success, and his ability to implement a effective, simple coaching strategy in less than a year.
The following season he did the same again with a different team. He walked into the Sharks organisation and made immediate changes by naming Bismarck du Plessis as captain and announcing Pat Lambie as fly-half and Francois Steyn as inside centre.
He took them to the semi-finals despite their previous eighth place finish. This achievement is underrated as Pat Lambie, their form player, was ruled out for the season in Round 6.
Jake White will walk into the Wallabies set up and will be able to effectively communicate his coaching strategy in a shorter amount of time than Michael Cheika could. It is a simpler strategy, one that is easily to translate to results on the pitch and won that strengthens defence and wins World Cups.
I can’t wait for Cheika to coach the Wallabies. I can’t wait to see our expansive style take fans back to the days of Mark Ella and David Campese. I can’t wait to see a coach sit at the helm for a long amount of time and create a dynasty to rival Rod McQueen’s.
I just want to see it happen after Jake White delivers immediate results for us over the next 11 months.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.