Our next Great White Hope: If Cheika fails, then what?

The Wallabies are slowly turning into the English national football team. There seems to be a ghost hanging around these sides, haunting the hotel rooms of the players and the media following them.

Although ethereal, it shackles to the ground.

The English press relentlessly pump up their football team despite their continuing mediocrity and are unceasingly harsh whenever the Three Lions don’t meet the bloated expectations.

In a manner perfectly reminiscent of the cycle of life: England plays well, gets hyped, falls beneath expectations, is pilloried, manager is sacked and then England plays well.

This is a parallel of what happens with the Wallabies, every year or two. If the Wallabies don’t beat New Zealand – which they didn’t, this year, though they almost did once and achieved a draw – a sizeable portion of the Australian rugby scene and media strap on their parachutes and bail out.

It is as if they’ve just figured out they’d prefer to actually go out with girl who came third, instead of the one they proposed to in the final episode. The only option ever is to go back to the drawing board.

This attitude is utterly ridiculous. The current crop of All Blacks, for three or four years, has been the best rugby side the world has ever seen. Well, that’s what people more informed than me have been saying. The stats don’t lie. Since 2011, they’ve won 87 per cent (41 out of 47) of their games.

So what is the solution, according to the media? Well it seems to follow a rather simple narrative, that of the Great White Hope.

In England, 19-year-old Raheem Sterling is fulfilling that role for the Three Lions at the moment. However, at least there is a greater awareness of this bubble-burst cycle, and its damaging implications, among the English press and fans. For once, they didn’t expect a World Cup trophy to be brought back from Brazil this year – although they didn’t expect the limp performance they got.

In Australia, Robbie Deans never really seemed to be wholly accepted, mainly because of his New Zealand-ness. After residing over pretty poor results against New Zealand (the must-be-beatens) and a properly shocking capitulation against the British and Irish Lions, Deans was swapped out for Ewen McKenzie in no time.

McKenzie had been coaching the Reds to a Super Rugby title, playing an attractive brand of rugby union. Now, because he hasn’t beaten the All Blacks and some other bloke has come along and done the same thing – coach an Australian team to a Super Rugby title playing an attractive brand of rugby – McKenzie’s been carelessly tossed out onto the scrapheap, like Woody was for Buzz Lightyear.

So from today, Michael Cheika will plop his window-smashing self on the blood-stained Wallabies hot-seat, and once more we’ll enter the ‘enraptured’ or honeymoon phase of a Wallabies’ coach’s lifespan.

I think Cheika will be a success if he coaches the Wallabies. I base this on basically nothing, but he did well at the Waratahs. He most importantly seems to have a talent for management – assertiveness and fantastic man-management are the names of the game. A smile that was a surprise to me crept up on my face upon reading the news of his appointment.

But will Cheika’s appointment really fix the problems that the ARU and rugby union in Australia face? Of course, he may, unlike McKenzie, live up to the media’s expectations, but it’s pretty clear that rugby in Australia has many problems that can’t be fixed by one coach.

I guess there is hope that if Cheika manages to make the Wallabies win, and in style, and maybe even win the Bledisloe, then that will take the pressure off. A win will give Bill Pulver and the rest of the ARU the funds, time or darkness away from the spotlight to strap on their overalls and get down and dirty by fixing the burst water pipes.

However, call me a cynic, but I don’t think Cheika, even with Bledisloe-in-hand, will turn the ARU back to the gold it was a few years ago.

The Great White Hope is a very convenient and easy media narrative. It gives bees their buzz. Conversations are started, arguments are fought out, rumours become intellectual spice and most of all it shifts copy.

If Cheika fails, the media and simple-minded will be hoping out for another Great White Hope. It’d probably be converting Jarryd Hayne or Greg Inglis or something short-sighted like that.

But again, as with so many things – other sport, politics – after the big PR-and-media circus leaves for the next big-issue town, us poor and suffering scum of the Australian rugby public will yet again will left to stew by ourselves on the Vegemite-sandwich-for-lunch malaise that is Wallaby-supporting life.

All thanks to flippancy and impatience.