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Michael Cheika is mad as hell and he isn’t going to take it anymore. Whatever ‘it’ is.
After getting monstered by Eddie Jones before England’s unlikely 3-0 whitewash of the Wallabies, Cheika is retaliating by putting the boot into Steve Hansen.
Like all these generally ludicrous and meaningless verbal fights between coaches, it is hard to know who started what between Cheika and Hansen, and what it all means in the grand scheme of Bledisloe Cup rugby.
The sequence seemingly started in June, with Cheika’s reluctance to respond to the goading of Jones, after the England coach declared his intention to inflict ‘Bodyline rugby’ on the Wallabies, and said there was an Australian media conspiracy against his team, aiming to put them off their game.
Cheika has been famous for his blazing temper during his coaching career.
Several times he has, for instance, committed the cardinal sin of tongue-lashing a referee at halftime. In the coaches box, too, he often gives Oscar Award-winning performances of The Angry Coach Barely Controlling His Over-Brimming Emotions When Things Start To Go Against His Team.
Yet despite the provocations from Jones, Cheika maintained a strange silence.
But Hansen, probably with the Bledisloe in mind (who knows with this nonsense?), made the observation to the rugby media that Cheika had been “bullied” in the media by his former Randwick club mate Jones, something that worked in favour of his England team.
Cheika sprung the trap by describing Hansen’s comment as “really shallow”.
At the time, I thought the real issue in this exchange was why Cheika, generally a coach who erred on the side of volubility rather than silence, would attack Hansen over a matter that really involved him and his curious approach to Jones.
I was reminded of the old story about the man who is out of sorts with his wife coming home and kicking the cat.
We move forward now to the New Zealanders’ arrival in Sydney on Sunday. Hansen was asked by a gaggle of rugby media types about Cheika’s suggestion that he had some selection headaches regarding Aaron Cruden and Beauden Barrett, and Sam Cane and Ardie Savea.
Adrian Warren, the long-time, endlessly assiduous rugby reporter, quoted Hansen’s reply: “It’s good of the Australian coach to start picking our team. I’d say he’s got enough problems of his own, probably.”
That rather innocuous sledge was met with a curious response from Cheika: “I don’t know why he (Hansen) is upset. I don’t know what he is about. We know how we are thought of. We know they think we are no chance to anything.”
To ram home this thought-bubble about the Wallabies being the underdogs, we had Rob Horne telling the rugby media how the All Blacks regarded the Test as a game-over result already: “All the pressure is on them really. They are supposed to win. From what it sounds like coming out of their camp there is no point us turning up.”
But here is Ben Smith: “It’s a tough place to play, Sydney. We know our record over here isn’t that great… I know Australia are going to come out and really challenge… We know the challenge we are up again.”
This doesn’t sound like a player expecting an easy victory at ANZ Stadium.
All this verbal stuff between the coaches, along with the involvement of the players, is a core and inevitable part of the build-up to the Sydney Bledisloe Test, which is the first in the series each year.
It is very much like the face-off of boxers at the weigh-in before their big fight.
In past years though, as Brett McKay pointed out in The Roar, Hansen has gone out of his way to kill former Wallabies coaches Robbie Deans and Ewen McKenzie with kindness.
This year Hansen has been far more aggressive.
Is it because Cheika has been more aggressive, for his part, than Deans or McKenzie? Or is it because Hansen believes that Cheika might be provoked to go over the top with his field tactics, as in the Wallabies’ (sanctioned?) thuggery in the Rugby World Cup 2015 final?
That thuggery came from Sekope Kepu, who went out his way at Twickenham to late tackle Dan Carter and to put head-high shots on him several times. Kepu was lucky to stay on the field, only given a verbal warning from referee Nigel Owens, which was not activated when Kepu indulged in another high shot.
Perhaps Hansen is trying to goad Cheika into repeating this tactic and taking the risk of having a key player being yellow carded, or even red carded?
We shall see on Saturday night, when Australia will be ultra-competitive at a venue where they have drawn and won their last Tests against New Zealand.
The real story from the All Blacks arriving on Sunday is that they arrived on Sunday. This represents a radical break with past practice, when they turned up later in the week. This gives them the entire week in Sydney for preparation, something they have not enjoyed in the past.
The idea, apparently, is to acclimatise to Sydney and allow a smooth transition into game day. This does not suggest a team taking it for granted that if they turn up, they will automatically win.
It seems too, that the All Blacks have had by far the better preparation for what is going to be a bruising, attritional Test. Their players are match fit. The Wallabies are practice fit.
The bulk of the New Zealand squad, 26 players, took part in the Super Rugby quarter-finals. The Brumbies were the only Australian side in the quarter-finals.
This means that it is many weeks for most Aussie players since they have taken part in a real match. And for Matt Giteau, Drew Mitchell and Adam Ashley-Cooper, we are talking in terms of a month and more.
Even Israel Folau admits that he and the other Wallabies could be rusty.
But Hansen had his side double-down on their match fitness by playing a game of three halves against local opposition at Manuka, Auckland, last Friday.
Can match-fitness trump the home-ground advantage? The first Test will reveal. But what we do know is that the mind games rarely survive the first massive contact.