The Roar
The Roar

Advertisement

Is Michael Cheika steering a leaky ship?

Roar Rookie
7th December, 2014
Advertisement
Michael Cheika has to go back to the drawing board. (Source: AAP Image/Theron Kirkman)
Roar Rookie
7th December, 2014
174
2815 Reads

The dust has settled on a turbulent two months in Australian rugby. The newly-appointed Wallabies coach Michael Cheika, is part-time in the job heading in to a World Cup year.

This is an unsatisfactory state of affairs that others on this site have commented upon.

The Wallabies have put in their worst Northern Hemisphere tour in almost a decade. It would take the most optimistic of types to think that this could be turned around before the World Cup.

That Chris Dutton in Fairfax Media saw fit to state that “Cheika is safe a month after starting his job…” is a sign of how precarious the position of Wallabies coach has become.

How did this happen?

News of the inflight fracas over the seemingly trivial matter of a t-shirt between Kurtley Beale and former ARU employee Di Patston broke on October 2 as the Wallabies prepared for their last game of the Rugby Championship in Mendoza.

Following that story breaking, I was struck by the sheer number of stories which quoted or referred to the views of anonymous sources within the team.

From the outset the leaks were out to discredit Patston, the alleged victim of workplace harassment, and McKenzie.

Advertisement

On the same day, “a well-placed source close to Beale” told Guardian Australia that “…Beale’s verbal spat with a senior member of the Wallabies management team is the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of a potentially destabilising rift between players and management…”.

Later, on 9 October, Fairfax Media had “…learnt troubling new details about the extent of the dysfunction within the Wallabies…” This included that “[b]y the middle of the Rugby Championship, unease within the squad had grown in direct proportion to Patston’s involvement in the micromanagement of the team’s day-to-day workings, and the high level of drama that accompanies her involvement.”

We learnt that this dissatisfaction about Patston’s role went as far back as the 2013 spring tour, where McKenzie apparently prevaricated over the issue at a team meeting.

That next day The Guardian’s Rajiv Maharaj reported (rather obviously) that “… too many players are talking off the record…” and that McKenzie had lost the playing group.

We were warned that “… the full story behind Beale’s texts has the potential to tear the Wallabies apart at the seams” and that the incompetence of McKenzie and disquiet over Patston’s role, not Beale’s misconduct, is the real story here.

Not long after these leaks a new theme emerges – that only Michael Cheika, as coach of the Super Rugby winning Waratahs, can bring the prodigal son Beale back into the fold.

Only if he wants the job, of course. We get our first taste on 12 October when Jeff Wilson in Fairfax told us that the Wallabies were about to implode and of “…stories from the Waratahs about how Cheika motivated them – his sometimes unusual ways clearly worked.”

Advertisement

On 13 October Greg Gowden on espnscrum.com had “team sources” that confirmed that “Wallaby team harmony began to collapse even before the Dublin drinking affair on the team end-of-season tour of Europe late last year”.

Not only were the players “troubled by Patston’s increasing influence in the Wallabies preparation for Test matches, and her involvement in team discipline” but apparently several said they were scared of Patston and “potential witch-hunts”.

While admitting that Beale’s conduct was “near impossible to defend”, he had even more inside information that Beale “still has the support of numerous teammates, who are concerned he could be made the ultimate scapegoat.”

It is here that we learnt that the fuss “…has prompted increased interest at the ARU towards Cheika, the successful Waratahs coach, taking over the Wallabies…” But we couldn’t get too excited as “…it is understood that Cheika … has reservations about the Wallabies position…”

On October 14, Sydney Morning Herald Chief Sports writer Andrew Webster sunk the boot in further. His inside information was of the players’ abject lack of faith in McKenzie to the extent that the players apparently couldn’t wait until the season was over (the poor fellows!).

McKenzie was unflatteringly compared to Michael Cheika, the new messiah described as “…the cranky but respected Waratahs coach who unlocked and nurtured the brilliance of Beale this year and achieved the impossible – a Super Rugby title for NSW.”

On 17 October, Rajiv Maraj in The Guardian went in for the third crack, boldly predicting the All Blacks would win the third Bledisloe Test “by plenty” (the Wallabies lost by a point) and that “…if you believe what the players are saying in private” then McKenzie had lost the playing group.

Advertisement

In case you weren’t capable of reading between the lines, on 19 October various observers, including Peter FitzSimons and yes, that man again, Rajiv Maharaj quickly lined up to anoint Cheika as McKenzie’s successor, before the ink on his letter of resignation was even dry.

Now I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist – if there is a choice between a stuff-up and a conspiracy, the stuff-up wins every time. Certainly the McKenzie and the ARU’s handling of Beale’s off field indiscretions bears enough elements of a good, old-fashioned stuff-up.

But it appears that the Beale fiasco was the trigger for a series of co-ordinated leaks from within to selected members of the rugby media.

There’s no way of knowing who was behind the leaks, but it certainly worked out nicely for Cheika. With McKenzie’s resignation coming less than two weeks before the first tour game against the Barbarians, the ARU were in a pretty tight spot when it came to appointing a replacement. This allowed Cheika to drive a hard bargain and to continue coaching the Waratahs in addition to his Wallabies duties.

The long-term ramifications of this affair are quite concerning. As Wallabies coach it seems you need to watch your back against a campaign of destabilisation from within that seems more federal politics than rugby.

You barely get a year in the job to prove yourself. It might have worked for Cheika in the short term and produced some good copy, but you can’t help but feel that this culture is fast making the position of Wallabies coach the worst job in rugby.

close