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On June 11, 1967, little baby Michael Cheika was just a few months old. Australia beat New Zealand that day, in a Test match.
OK, it was rugby league, but still, Australians must take wins over the Kiwis any old way they can.
The score was 22-13, and the Aussies scored six tries. Two of them were scored by a guy named Les Hanigan.
The Sydney papers glowed over the handsome young Hanigan. They even called his two tries ‘handsome,’ and his runs ‘sparkling.’ They described the clean-cut Hanigan’s ‘swerves’ and side-steps, and called him stylish on the left wing.
Little baby Cheika couldn’t sleep well that night, June 11, 1967. His mother used an old Maronite secret to help him sleep. In heavily accented English, she read the newspaper to the sad infant.
And it was the sports page which gave him peace.
Her voice, saying ‘Hanigan… Hanigan… Hanigan’ gave him tranquility, and the fact that he beat New Zealand with his good looks and pace and clean-cut presence, stuck in little Mikey’s brain, to be resurrected years later.
Much of Cheika’s life was pre-ordained, as was explained in my prior essay about the SS Waratah.
And here is the remarkable secret as to why Ned Hanigan is the world’s most surprising Wallaby blindsider.
Ned’s Super Rugby career has been relatively short. This season, his first real one for the Waratahs, Ned amassed two yellow cards for being handsome, was pinged three times for being stylishly offside, swerved and stole one lineout, conceded eleven turnovers and won two, and made 22 dashing handling errors on his rakish 69 carries.
But it was his name that attracted Cheika. He chanted ‘Hanigan’ like a mantra of salvation. Deep in his memory’s archetype, he found solace in those three Celtic syllables, while he read hate mail, dismal statistics, and gloom.
To make himself feel scientific, he research Ned’s pedigree. Dubbo-born, Coonamble-raised. Cheika saw that the name Coonamble comes from ‘guna’ (feces) and ‘bil’ (a lot of). He liked that.
St Josephs, Goldstein, Randwick, NSW. Good, good, gooder.
And then the Holy Grail. Cheika felt (without confirming) that Ned was the grandson of Les.
“If it could be, it must be,” Cheika intoned, as he smoked a long tall cigarette from the Levant. “Yes, if something can be true, it must be true. Hanigan is my man. Hanigan is my plan.”
Enjoy Bledisloe 2 with one less mystery, Roarers!
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.