Cheika will ensure Wallabies are a football team, not a business

Agree completely. Massive conflict of interest. In the short time it took t make cheika coach while allowing him to coach the tahs in a world cup year screams of desperation and short sightedness. There couldn't have been time to canvas the other super xv coaches to cover that access to players point. They'll all be out to get any advantage over the tahs next year and won't let him near their sides during the tournament. How would the Force coach deal with cheika telling his players to do this or that? Just doesn't work and this decision will echo through oz rugby history as one of the very worst to have been made. Frying pan to the fire. Oz fans here are all supprting it without even thinking through the logistics. Its just let's all get on board the tahs cheika gravy train even though we've know idea where its going.

I don't think Kurtley can teach either.

Absolute drivel. Replace the name Cheika with Mackenzie and you have the same resume... The Reds were a rabble until link came along and the results are there to see. Mackenzie introduced the hardline no nonsense culture at the wallabies highlighted by the Dublin suspensions. Link had to deal with THE toxic playmaker at the Reds in cooper and the Reds contingent in the wallabies had no trouble towing the my way or the highway ideology of link.... These two coaches are interchangeable really oh wait except one coaches and will continue to coach the Waratahs... Don't be fooled in thinking that link wanted to select Beale for the first two Bledisloe cup games, it was at that time beale's manager was talking about KB playing league for parramatta if he wasn't a starter for the wallabies. He was told to by pulver, I have no doubt about that.

Was that for real? I listened to the game only (o/s for work) and I saw that one of the Roarers say that they thought that AAC was wearing makeup. Seriously??

You came out with a load of garbage about him just being a guy who yells loud. So I pointed out that not many guys who "just yell loud" have his kind of record in life. Oh, and did you not read the point about him being the only coach to have won trophies in both the northern and southern hemisphere’s biggest club tournaments? Now, with that in mind I reckon I'm more on the money than you in arguing he's got more to him than a temper. Just a thought champ ;) .

completely agree

Deans was a NSW puppet & picked NSW has-beens. AUS got third place in RWC 2011 because he finally dumped them when we were out of the race. The up & comers had a great game vs Wales. Too little too late.

The point is Boonzie, that he could see the value in Potgieter where others hadn't. And Beale at 12 for that matter.

Telling it like it is again sheek. I like your frank and open "heart on sleeve" and admire it. If only they knew the truth of it, eh? I agree with all of that.

DId not do much good for Deans , even if he won :) The positive for Cheika is that noone wll realistically expect a lot of wins this tour. However irrespective of the pool and all that , OZ public will want to see wins at the world cup. He has very little ime to groom a team. too bad those in Europe dont want to come back and have a try for RWC squad.

Couldn't agree more, well said.

I read that post (from the Grant Fox interview) about Hansen estimating that the ABs coaches work 70 hours a week from January onwards...apart from knocking on my butt a little it does cast very serious doubt on Cheika's ability to coach both the Waratah's and Wallabies next year.

Exactly right. The role of head coach of the Tahs is a full time job. The role of head coach of the Wallabies is a full time job. You can't do both at once and do them both justice. Cheika as a the coach of a competition team can't have access to the player's information for the other 4 franchises without giving the Tahs a ridiculous advantage. And the other franchises won't have the Wallaby coach coming to training and developing relationships with them all year because it is also the Tahs head coach. I don't know what the answer is but this is not going to work. How can the non Tah's players get a fair chance at selection when Cheika is only going to be able to focus on them post Super rugby? He is only one man and the roles are mutually exclusive. I'm not hating on Cheika. I'm hating on the situation. And no I don't even have a solution. Just real fears for non-Tahs players in a RWC year

What a cr#p article, clearly written on the way to lunch with Alan Jones....

Lord, "That will be Cheika’s only responsibility – winning. There will be no business manager, and if there are still some “toxic” elements in the Wallaby camp as reported, then the offenders had better bury it, or Cheika will bury them" Are we going to get weekly articles how shocked you are that link quit, and there was no coup d'etat ever since the Tahs won the SR title to remove link from the wallabies by the media from NSW and how the toxic elements in the wallaby camp could play for a certain team in light blue. Cause by geez you stuck it to Link this year, undermining him week in and week out, and your answer was always the Tahs backline and that Cheika could do a better job. You got your man. I'd give you credit, if you actually had the guts to own up. Sadly your pretending like you had nothing to do with it. There lies the problem in Australian rugby, gutless undermining of our national team/coach from within the team, the ARU, the press and the journalists on the Roar. Let me ask you the question, say Jake white was still at the Brumbies, and he accepted to coach the wallabies but demanded to coach the brumbies next year during the WRC yeat, would you be ignoring this ???? I guarantee you that this would be a huge outrage, the press would be slamming it!!!! Pathetic eh???

I was one of the few here who actually enjoyed reading DL, but his assassination of Link and total love of Cheika, has a 'night of the long knives' feel to it I haven't been so disgusted in NSW since the NRL would stack the Kangaroos full of NSW players even after a QLD SoO series win AAC wearing make up on his 100th and Hooper's ineptitude as leader, knives in the back if your not part of the NSW clique. You should all hang your heads in shame for orchestrating this NSW, especially you DL

All this stuff about "culture" is pretty much irrelevant. Has Stuart Lancaster improved the culture of English international rugby? Possibly. Have the results changed that much? No. We still beat the NH teams more often than not, but not as often as we should. We still lose more than we should against SH teams (certainly more than we should if we have genuine aspirations of winning the RWC). Is this a cultural problem? Not really. We just don't have the players. There is a strong seam of talent coming through at younger levels and hope for the future rests there, not in some chimerical dreams regarding player behaviour or perfect institutional strcutures. The same applies for Australia. You are short in some key areas and I don't see any Messiah, Michael Cheika included, whistling up a decent front row or a settled, international-class, half-back pairing (I'm not sure there are too many other major flaws). So many of these articles and comments resemble those written when Ewen McKenzie was appointed just 15 months ago; in some cases only the name has changed. Still, all this stuff keeps the journos in work and the commentators commenting until the next top class Australian team emerges (which I've no doubt it will in due course).

Then why in the name of the big guy upstairs would he have continued to pick Alexander and why also would he have picked so many of his team out of position? The papers gave him a clear instruction on that....

Totally agree. There are hundreds of hardx nut ex club rugby players who could say my way or the highway and get the Wallabies to win all their games and start money pouring in. So simple. Ridiculous

ahhh...excuse me...there are thousands of successful multi millionaires, millions who can speak four languages...how many of them have a winning record as an international coach...zip...nil...none...yet you provide it here as a positive attribute in terms of being an international coach. What has that to do with rugby...please...enlighten me?