Could Stephen Larkham replace Michael Cheika before the World Cup?

Oh no. It has taken Eddie Jones, England’s coach, less than a week to start mocking Michael Cheika as ‘Cheika The Clown’.

Cheika has brought this ridicule on himself. It is damaging, on and off the field, to himself and his touring Wallabies side.

At a press conference on Thursday in London, Jones announced his 33-man England squad for the coming home internationals, which climaxes at Twickenham with a Test against Australia on December 3.

Jones was asked about the Wallabies quest for a grand slam tour. That sound you hear is the noise of a metaphorical boot being smashed into Cheika’s credibility.

“We’ve got a long time before we play Australia,” Jones replied, with a cheeky-laddie, sly smirk on his face. “They’re closer to Christmas than the South Africa Test, but we know they’re talking even now about a grand slam.

“So they’re obviously full of optimism, confidence. So they won’t be sending in the clowns.”

Boom, boom!

The reptiles of the British rugby media (think Stephen Jones and his anti-Wallabies obsession for starters) are going to have a field day with the Cheika-The-Clown meme.

This, in turn, could destabilise the Wallabies in the same manner Cheika’s failure to cope with Jones’ verbal onslaught before England’s tour of Australia earlier in year did.

Jones used the same tactics then as he is exploiting now. On landing in Australia, he claimed the Wallabies were predicting they would win the series with a 3-0 goldwash.

Then he unsettled Cheika by claiming that England would use “bodyline” tactics against the Wallabies.

An unsettled Cheika made mistakes in team selection and tactics that saw the Wallabies lose the series 3-0, an unprecedented result for the national side at home against England.

The problem for Cheika trying to combat this sort of fall-out is that he created the problem for himself, and seems to be determined to continue feeding the problem.

Asked by journalists after the Eden Park Test about the All Blacks creating a record for successive victories by a top-tier national side, Cheika ranted in a truly stupid manner: “I don’t think they really want my comment anyway. They dressed us up as clowns today, so they wouldn’t really want our comment. I don’t think they respect our comment anyway.”

Dumb and dumber!

It was Cheika who insisted, without any evidence, that there was a link between the cartoon and the All Blacks. Then on his return to Australia, he doubled down on this loony tunes assertion by repeating it to the waiting Australian media at Sydney airport.

Then he blabbered on about how he and the Wallabies aren’t getting the respect they somehow deserve.

Tom Scott, a brilliant cartoonist in New Zealand, has drawn a cartoon of the All Blacks coach Steve Hansen holding at arm’s length a baby Cheika with four-day shadow, an angry face and wearing leaking nappies. “Could someone from Australian rugby change him?” Hansen is asking.

This is a question actually that needs to be addressed by Bill Pulver and the ARU board.

How is it that Cheika has been allowed to get away with this trashing of himself and the Wallabies brand by the ARU?

If he continues with this sort of unacceptable behaviour will the ARU take action against Cheika and “change him”?

The ARU board is stacked with business people, female and male, who are supposed to know everything about the marketing and selling of a product. How can these experts remain silent when the national coach is destroying the Wallabies brand with his conspiracy theories and his attacks on the integrity of the Test referees?

The silence suggests to me that the ARU board is out of its depth on matters relating to rugby practice and governance.

And here’s another thing. Where is the esteemed board member John Eales, the exalted former Wallabies captain and now a business guru, in bringing Cheika to heel?

He has been on the Fox Sports rugby panels at the Wellington and Auckland Tests, both occasions when Cheika’s ranting went well beyond the bounds of acceptable gamesmanship by coaches in after-Test banter.

In the case of the referees at Wellington, Cheika went close to defamation. In Auckland, his rants about the All Blacks’ involvement with the New Zealand Herald’s Cheika-The-Clown cartoon bordered on looney tune nonsense.

Eales has had virtually nothing to say about these matters. This is despite the fact that he was in a position where he could have provided the sort of stern commentary that Cheika clearly needs.

The Eales silence has been matched by a similar silence from the ARU board and its chief executive Bill Pulver about the way Cheika has demeaned himself and the Wallabies brand throughout this year.

This silence needs to end. Cheika has to be brought into line. If nothing is done, the Spring tour that starts next weekend at Cardiff against Wales, the 600th Test played by the Wallabies, is going to be a disaster.

The Guardian’s John Davidson made this point about Cheika’s rants in a recent article: “The focus needs to be more on Cheika’s team and not on outside distractions … For years the Wallabies have talked a good game but rarely produced it when it mattered. There is a need to get back to basics and stick to on-field matters … You earn respect by what you do on the pitch, by your actions actually in the game, not off the field.”

Has someone in the ARU told Cheika these obvious home truths?

Now The Guardian is a British newspaper. It can’t be expected to be supportive of Cheika. But the worrying thing for Cheika, the Wallabies and the ARU is that Cheika could be losing the support of one of the strongest and most influential admirers in the Australian media.

Last week The Australian published an article by its veteran rugby writer, Wayne Smith, titled: Question of respect haunting Cheika.

The article made this telling accusation: “Just five days after berating the New Zealand Herald for not showing respect to the Australian jersey in a back-page cartoon depicting him as a clown, Cheika has created a dubious precedent by selecting former Melbourne Storm winger Marika Koroibete in the 32-man touring squad before he has played a single game of rugby union in Australia.”

I support the inclusion of Koroibete in the Wallabies squad. He is a much better addition to the team than, say, Drew Mitchell or Adam Ashley-Cooper, two veterans dragged back from France earlier in the year. Koroibete at least has the speed and power to score tries, something that the Wallabies have lacked in a finisher since Israel Folau was moved from the wing to fullback.

But Smith’s warning about “respect to the Australian jersey” seems to be a warning shot from him to the ARU about Cheika’s performance, on and off the field.

In another article, headed ‘Gold jumpers going cheap – and not just at A-Mart,’ Smith puts Cheika’s behaviour in the context of what happened to Ewen McKenzie:

“Cheika is undoubtedly the man to coach the Wallabies but he is acting without constraints at the moment. The smart thing would have been to admit he overreacted after the Eden Park Test … but instead, he reinforced his comments. No one from the ARU pulled him into line, yet these same officials were constantly in the face of his predecessor, Ewen McKenzie. Nothing has gone too far – yet – but the warning signs are definitely there.”

Reading between the lines, I sense that Smith is suggesting that the ARU board is losing some confidence in Cheika. Or perhaps, that he is losing confidence in Cheika and that something needs to be done about the growing problem.

This suggestion is reinforced with Stephen Larkham’s revelation as the Wallabies were flying out of Australia that his ambition is to coach the Wallabies after the Rugby World Cup 2019 in Japan.

Whether Larkham will be given the Wallabies head coach is speculation, of course. But we do know that he is going to coach the Brumbies next year before becoming a full-time assistant coach for the Wallabies.

He is leaving the Brumbies because his goal, he told reporters, is to become head coach: “The head coach of the Wallabies is certainly the top role in Australia … As a coach there are certainly aspirations to get to the top.”

Does the ARU support this ambition? And why is Larkham, an ambitious coach as his history at the Brumbies indicates, talking now about his ambition to be the head coach of the Wallabies?

The rugby.com.au headline to its story about Larkham’s accession to permanent assistant coach of the Wallabies merely notes that “Larkham stops short of confirming succession plan.”

This headline leaves open the obvious question about whether the ARU actually has confirmed (privately, no doubt) this succession plan for Larkham.

Was Larkham given permission by the ARU to state his ambition as part of a warning shot to Cheika that his successor is already in place if he is needed?

Wayne Smith, who is informed about the internal politics of Australian rugby, made the case in the same article that a lot of what Cheika has been doing, on and off the field, has not really helped the cause of the Wallabies: “More and more, the Wallabies are becoming a team entirely to themselves … There have been random selections … throughout the season. Was Leroy Houston chosen only because he was in England and convenient for the Twickenham Test against the Pumas? And why has Australian abandoned the idea of independent selectors?”

If Cheika’s Wallabies have a successful tour then he is safe. Of course, a grand slam-winning tour will ensure him his position for as long as he wants.

What would constitute a successful tour, however, aside from winning the grand slam?

Winning at least three of the five Tests is the minimum requirement. A win over England, though, might cover perhaps up to three losses.

The fact of the matter is that the Wallabies’ losing run this season at home has diminished the pulling power of the team with local supporters. Tests at Brisbane and Perth saw a large number of empty seats in the stadiums. As the Wallabies are a major source of revenue (outside of television rights), the ARU needs the team to be successful and popular at home.

This is not happening right now. A poor tour of Europe could intensify the lack of support the Wallabies will get next year.

If Cheika were a more popular coach as far as the public is concerned then these concerns might be tempered slightly. But his abrasive manner, his ranting, his lack of class jars the sensibility of many rugby supporters.

When this happens, the best defence is being successful. Cheika managed to achieve this last year with the splendid performance by the Wallabies at Rugby World Cup 2015.

But this success has been virtually wiped out by the historic losses of the 2016 season.

Given all this, how Cheika conducts himself at media conferences and in the coaches box during the tour – along with the performances of the Wallabies – could be crucial to his continuing future as the Wallabies coach.

Up until now, Cheika has been the indispensable coach as far as the ARU has been concerned. This is no longer the case. Or, it no longer seems to be the case.

There is everything to play for, as they say, for Michael Cheika and his Wallabies starting on Sunday morning (AEDT time) at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium against a confident Wales side.