Michael Cheika attacks "the Wallabies are doomed" media calls

As a rampant number 8 Michael Cheika never took a backward step. He has carried this aggression into every aspect of his coaching.

The latest victims of a Cheika shoulder charge, this time of the verbal kind, is the Australian rugby media (including me, I guess) who have been critical of the play of some prominent Wallabies and the form of the Super Rugby teams.

Here is Cheika’s first hit-up against the reptiles of the media: “There is a lot of carry-on from people who have different agenda or maybe they’ve had too many years of negativity and they just can’t break the cycle.”

I must say this verbal shoulder charge lacks any real impact.

What is the dreadful agenda we are accused of having?

We have been pointing out the obvious. That is that the Super Rugby teams are under-performing. In something over 20 games this season the Australian teams have only won twice against New Zealand teams. And one of those win was first up when the Brumbies defeated an under-done Hurricanes side at Canberra 52-10.

We have also criticised the play of many of the Wallabies from last season’s team. Again this should surely not be controversial.

Finally, we are starting to be critical some of the coaches who have allowed their teams to go backwards the further the season has advanced.

Michael Foley is a classic example of this coaching failure. Earlier in the season we saw Richard Graham sacked. And more recently, Stephen Larkham seems to have lost the coaching plot with his Brumbies.

The Larkham downturn very worrying. He is the backs coach for the Wallabies. Last year he called for his Brumbies’ backline to be the Wallabies backline. This call was bold but not outrageous last year. This year a similar call would be dismissed as total nonsense.

The Brumbies backline invariably stands too deep. Whatever turn over ball their fetchers win is rarely exploited. There is a terrific lot of aimless kicking, too.

No one could be proud of the Brumbies attack in recent weeks when the team has received thrashings at Canberra from the two (admittedly impressive) leading New Zealand teams, the Chiefs and the Crusaders.

And then this weekend, playing in the cold and damp of Invercargill, an ordeal for any visiting side, the Brumbies were smashed defensively by a fired up Highlanders side which was coming off a couple of losses itself.

The statistics of this match won by the Highlanders 23-10 make curious (if you are a Brumbies supporter) reading.

The Brumbies made 159 carries to the 64 of the Highlanders: ran for 289 metres to 234: and made 59 tackles to 187 by the Highlanders!

Admittedly the match was played in challenging conditions. It would have been interesting, for example, if the match had been played in the enclosed stadium at Dunedin. Nevertheless, it is pathetic that the Brumbies made a little over a metre or so each carry on average.

The Highlanders made massive gains on the few occasions they had the ball. Part of this was due to the fact that the Brumbies missed so many tackles of the relative few they had to make.

This is not good enough for a team replete with Wallabies. And it is disastrous for the coaching reputation of Larkham.

The team that played such wonderful ensemble rugby against the Hurricanes and the Waratahs early in the season with smart plays and energy both physical and mental has degenerated into a side that shuffles the ball around without much impetus or effectiveness.

The Wallabies back/attack coach is producing a side whose main attacking weapon is the rolling maul, an obsessional tactic that has held back the development of ensemble play in the South African franchises for any number of years.

Back to Cheika and his thoughts about the doom media and what he sees as the current state of play with his prospective 2016 Wallabies:

“I am not concerned at all. I only see opportunity all the time I watch the boys play. I am not going to say it’s all going swimmingly. We would like to have a few more wins as a nation, for sure.”

I can’t see this as anything more than a reluctant Wallabies coach seemingly agreeing with us nabobs of negativity.

How can the Wallabies coach not be concerned when things are not going swimmingly for the Australian franchises? How many more losses do the leading Australian sides like the Melbourne Rebels, say, have to have to bottom-placed sides in other conferences like the Auckland Blues before Cheika concedes that there is a problem with the form of the Australian players and coaches?

Where are the Australian equivalents of, say, Damian McKenzie or Brad Weber or the Ioane brothers?

Cheika has foreshadowed a number of possibilities for the Wallabies in their June Tests against England. Some of them make sense, some of them don’t make sense and there is no discussion of where the real changes have to be made.

Cheika has suggested that Samu Kerevi and Karmichael Hunt are squad possibilities, along with Joe Tomane (who is currently injured) and Dane Haylett-Petty.

Kerevi (also on the injured list), Tomane and Heylett-Petty all deserve consideration for the Wallabies squad. It would be interesting to see Haylett-Petty surrounded by better players and more coherent attacking and defending systems than the chaos he has to play in with the Western Force.

He is a player of size, some speed and a lot of aggression in his running and under the high ball. Cheika has suggested that Israel Folau and Kurtley Beale could be playing in different positions for the Wallabies this year.

This could, and perhaps should mean, a Beale-Folau centres combination. The hard-running fullback like Haylett-Petty could provide more impetus to this formidable Waratahs pair.

But like the dog that did not bark in the night, Cheika provided some mystery with his discussion about possible new players by not mentioning Nick Stirzaker and Jack Debreczeni, the Rebels’ slick halves pairing.

Cheika has said that he is interested in bringing back Will Genia for the England Tests. To me this makes no sense. Genia has been injured during the European season. He would be certainly not up to even Super Rugby standard let alone Test standard in the lower tiered French competition his team plays in.

But more importantly, it is time for Cheika to start looking at the next generation of halves rather than going back to past but now over-the-hill champions. And the Rebels pairing is the next generation that needs to be brought into the Wallabies system, at least.

Cheika has foreshadowed, too, that later on in the year he is looking at eligible European-based players to contribute to the Wallabies cause. The players concerned are, presumably, Matt Giteau and Drew Mitchell.

Again, put me in the doom and gloom-mongers if Cheika does anything like this.

Giteau showed that he is no longer big enough, fast enough or anything enough to be a Test starter. Why put him in the squad to perhaps play off the bench when local young talent like the Rebels newcomer Reece Hodge should be given a chance to establish himself as an impact player who can play every position except halfback?

There is no discussion, either, aside from Hooper’s inevitable selection, about changes in the Wallabies forwards from 2015.

I reckon that the entire Wallabies pack needs to be re-worked. New and newish players like Rory Arnold, Toby Smith (who had a blinder against the Blues for the Rebels), Will Skelton (who played a blinder against the Stormers), Hugh Roach, Tom Robertson (even though he is very inexperienced) and Jed Holloway need to be given a taste of being in the Wallabies squad, at the very least.

The thing about Cheika’s ideas that I don’t like very much is that he is reluctant to give much encouragement to young players.

He had Jed Holloway and Andrew Kellaway on the Waratahs playing list and gave only Holloway a couple of runs, even though Kellaway had been a star at the World Rugby’s Under-20 tournaments.

Daryl Gibson inherited an old squad that was largely the same Cheika’s. He has brought new players into the forwards and the backs, moved Folau to centre and the result was a terrific victory against the Stormers 32 – 30 at Newlands.

This victory is easily the most impressive performance by an Australian Super Rugby side this season. Gibson’s changes paid off in a big way. Folau raced away for a tremendous try. The Waratahs scored four tries to three. And their last try was scored in the dying seconds of the match.

Winning an away match with time almost up and the crowd willing you to lose (especially a vocal South African crowd) is some achievement. Perhaps the Waratahs are starting a charge to be the top side in the Australian Group. They have played both their byes, unlike the Rebels and Brumbies who were stalled as far as achieving winning points at the weekend.

Gibson has shown Cheika the way he has to go with the Wallabies. Bring in younger players and make some positional changes with established players.

It it time to ask the question that was posed last week: Will Michael Cheika have the rugby balls to make these changes/additions to bring new blood into his Wallabies squad?

It would be churlish of me not to note that SANZAAR actually got something right for once when they appointed the South African referee Craig Joubert to officiate at the Blues-Rebels match and the New Zealand referee Mike Fraser to handle the Stormers-Waratahs match.

Both referees made fateful and correct calls that probably entrenched the actual outcome of their matches.

In Joubert’s case he ruled that a Rebels maul smashing its way towards the Blues try line and the possible winning of a 36-30 final result match had broken away and then re-engaged with the front runner protecting the players behind him with ball.

This was a correct but gutsy call. If it had been given by a local referee, the Rebels camp might have been tempted to make cries of “we wuz robbed.” It was the type of incident, too, that a local referee might not have called for fear of being called out for bias.

In Fraser’s case he handed out a red card to Leolin Zas for taking out a Waratahs’ catcher. The red card came with 20 minutes left to play. The Waratahs scored almost immediately. Then at the end of the match they were able to exploit their one-man advantage in driving play towards the Stormers try line.

The home crowd went beserk, of course. Fraser, though, was adamant. And he was correct.

The incident was very much like the one that saw Jason Emery get a red card in the Highlanders-Sharks match the previous weekend. Neither Zas or Emery were in a position to catch the ball when they forced the catcher to land on his head from a great height.

SANZAAR needs to accept that as far as possible neutral referees should be used in the important games when teams from different conferences play against each other.

The principle here is that justice must be done and be seen to be done.