He built a successful clothing company, has dabbled in restaurants, speaks four languages and once dazzled Collette Dinnigan in French to secure a job – utterly unqualified – with the Australian fashion designer.
Now Super Rugby title-winning mentor Michael Cheika has been charged with reviving the ailing Wallabies after being ushered in as a coaching saviour just two days before the squad departs on a five-Test end-of-season tour of Europe.
Well compensated, yes, but Cheika coaches for love not money.
“I don’t consider it a job, it’s a passion,” Cheika said following his appointment on Wednesday.
And this, according to NSW captain Dave Dennis, is the beauty of it all.
A self-made millionaire, Cheika can do virtually as he pleases.
But he chooses to coach the Waratahs – until he took charge the greatest underachievers in Super Rugby – and now he’s chosen to also accept the poisoned chalice that is coaching the Wallabies.
In the past eight years, no less than four coaches of Australia’s most maligned and harshly judged national football team – Eddie Jones, John Connolly, Robbie Deans and Ewen McKenzie – have been forced out the door.
Dennis, though, has seen first-hand just how much Cheika – a father of four children under five – relishes a challenge.
“He’s a family man. He’s got four kids. He’s got a life outside of rugby where he’s got friends and family,” Dennis told AAP.
“He grew up in the east so he’s got a lot of connections, so he’s got a really good balance.
“But when he walks in the door at the Waratahs, his one focus is to win games of football and he’s clear in how he wants to do that.
“I think that’s earned him a lot of respect from the players.
“He’s so passionate about winning, not because he needs it to keep his job – because he’s told us before he doesn’t need to be here, he can do other things with his life.
“But he cares about the Waratahs and he cares about winning and he hasn’t just said that, he has shown it in his actions.”
The hot-headed mentor infamously smashed a door in the visitors’ coaching box during an early-round Super Rugby loss to the Brumbies this year and has spent much of the season under a suspended ban for verbally abusing a cameraman during another defeat in Durban against the Sharks.
The former hardman number eight’s passion was also on display to fans during the finals when fascinating TV footage captured Cheika using a golf club – a driver of course – to ram home his point in his pre-match dressing-room addresses.
Dennis, though, says it is not quite Cheika’s style to strike fear into his charges.
What you see is not always what you get.
“I don’t think the boys are scared. They enjoy it because he’s a good motivator,” Dennis said.
“There’s days where he’ll come in and have a good joke with the boys. The reality is, it’s football. It’s not life or death.
“But when he needs to be, he’ll be pretty stern and honest and all you want as a player is brute honesty, and he’s brought that.
“You know where you stand.”
Not knowing where he stood with his players was the reason McKenzie cited for so dramatically falling on his sword on Saturday night.
Revered in the Waratahs dressing room, Cheika will make it plain and simple where his Wallabies charges stand and will demand the same respect back.
The 47-year-old makes no apologies for his hard edge and admits it stems from his financial security.
“What that independence allows you to do is not to compromise,” he said after being appointed Waratahs coach at the end of 2012.
Dennis believes Cheika’s greatest strengths are motivating, identifying talent and bringing the team together, attributes that will be needed immediately given the Wallabies’ spectacular upheaval.
The son of Lebanese migrants, Cheika was born and bred in Coogee, where he played more than 300 matches for Randwick and won several Shute Shields with the Galloping Greens alongside greats like David Campese, Simon Poidevin … and the World Cup-winning McKenzie.
It was Campese who first plotted Cheika’s path into coaching when he urged his old team-mate to apply for the job as head coach of Padova in Italy.
He got the position and has not looked back.
Subsequent successful stints at Randwick and Leinster, where he guided the Irish team featuring former Wallabies captain and Waratahs flanker Rocky Elsom to European Cup glory in 2009, and a less successful two years at Stade Francais preceded his return to Australia with the Waratahs.
Intent on attracting crowds with running rugby – “sink or swim” – Cheika guided the Tahs to their elusive first Super Rugby championship in the most stylish of fashion.
The Waratahs’ class of 2014 scored the most tries, the most points and most attacking bonus points and Dennis attributes much of the transformation to Cheika stamping his authority – and style – from the outset.
“He’s got a strong personality. Everyone who’s met him knows that,” he said.
“But he’s very comfortable in his own skin and clear in what he wants and doesn’t shirk at anyone or anything to change that.
“From day one when he came into the club, he told us what he expected, what he wanted, where he saw us going and he’s stuck by that every single day he’s been at the club. He has not changed.
“He went through a tough period through the middle of the year with SANZAR but he still hasn’t gone away from what he believes in and that’s really struck a strong chord with the players.”
That is because whether Cheika is speaking English, French, Italian or Arabic, he is fluent in success.
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.
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