Michael Cheika speaks with viral fan

It doesn't literally come down to practice. Like any skill, some players are just naturally better than others. Practice can help you maximize your potential. But you will always be limited to your potential.

The kicking one is the perfect example! How can a professional kicker be so bad??? It literally 100% comes down to practice. Look at Beauden Barretts kicking percentage over the past couple of years.

Well what do you think the problem is?

Same can be said for English rugby regarding the private school comment, but they are in some of their best form since professionalism, and with their Under 20 side making the final the last 6 years in a row, they look good. Australias rugby problems run deeper i think.

Sometimes I think Cheika's style is more like the head of a human resources department. He is a motivator after all. He spent 4 weeks in camp before the english loses. 4 weeks. That should of been perfect preparation. This off season he was off to the US at some personal development course. I don't know if it was leadership training or what. I'm imagining he is applying those mind things he learned with the WB's. I don't know. I just imagine that there is too much classroom stuff, and less actual physical training stuff going on in camp wallaby. I thought last year the WB's were going to come out like animals to deal with the English. When will the reality sink in that the backs are against the wall. Good luck though.

I have played, coached and watched Rugby for 74 years. I have seen 171 Test Matches in the flesh here and overseas. The passion has gone out of our players. On Saturday versus Scotland the forwards wandered up to lineouts and scrums as the clock ticked down. There was no urgency in their play. Kuidrani is not a centre he never sets up his winger and his passes when he does are poor.. We kicked the ball back to Scotland when we should have retained it. Don't we learn anything from the current N.Z style. They show keeness to get on with the game and only kick when their is a definite chance of scoring. They have quick lineouts and are always trying to keep the opposition guessing.Hooper is a great player but not a great leader. Why not play Haylett Petty at full back and Folau in the centres. Kuidrani is a winger. Hanigan is not robust enough as a backrower. Our current hookers are on the way out why not play Leota or Ready. Foleys kicking game is poor. nowhere Barret's standard. What we need is a Captain who drives the team to do things quickly and keep the pressure on the opposition. Regards John Short

It appears that he is just as useless at PR as he is at coaching

If anyone on here seriously thinks that Larkham will not be the next head coach of the Wallabies you are delusional. This backroom deal has been done already, the only question is whether it is pre or post 2019.

Because then people would be criticising him for spending too much time on public relations instead of coaching.

i think quigley would agree with me in thinking that the players need to take a bit of ownership about how poor they are. they need to be practicing at their individual deficiencies in their own time. bringing back the feel good self love factor within the camp through player power has seen us decline pretty rapidly.

because that fan got 40k likes and therefore could be seen as some kind of representative.

Have never seen a post that I am in so much agreement with. 100% correct (except for being a Reds fan – c'mon mate, Brumbies ;) ). Thanks for your great comment. Having it articulated so well helps numb the pain.

Personally I think he is, but he needs some bigger brains to sit in the room with him, and / or he needs to know when to listen to them. At the moment we seem, relative to our opponents, to be pretty, simple and naive.

I just think rugby in Australia has lost its way, and am glad that i am not the only one who thinks so. I have spent the last 10 years following my son's sporting endeavours playing rep rugby, league and cricket including country schools rugby rep tours and junior gold rugby. To me, the issues start with junior rep coaching methods and selection practices. There needs to be a revolution in coaching at all levels, with a national coaching direction that improves skills and techniques. Having been involved in rep union and league, there is a lot of talent out there that rugby misses out on. An example of this is my sons junior gold coach who had a boy that now has played first grade league for the Gold Coast titans as a 20 year old, and didn't think he was good enough and sat him on the bench. This team won one game, when this boy played full back brilliantly, then dropped him again the next game. The titans saw him playing union and league at school boy level and grabbed him. This same thing happened on the country schools tour with the result that another talented young sportsman was lost to union. One of the boys in this tour was playing club rugby when mario ledesma noticed him and asked him to trial for the national under 20's side. How many potentially talented kids are missed because no-one notices them. Fix junior club and rep coaching first, improve talent id, especially in the bush and especially kids that don't attend private schools (personal experience), create a national coaching curriculum from the ground up, and enforce it with coaching clinics. Things like this aren't quick fixes but in my opinion needs to be done.

Because Facebook or something

Why did he only speak to 1 of the 50,000 brassed off fans?

Nice, enjoyed that.

Like Jack Quigley I have never felt so depressed and alienated and I can recall bad times under Greg Smith and the last part of Eddie Jones' tenure. The players are a part of the problem but I think the malaise is far deeper and the solutions will need the kind of deep changes that I just don't think rugby in this country is capable of. I hope I am wrong. There needs to be a clean out at the ARU board level. The game has been mismanaged for a long time now, although I think Oz rugby faces very great challenges in a market like ours and with a limited player base. As with other areas, I would look to bring in people who represent the benchmark we aspire to - AFL is a very smartly managed operation and it has managed expansion better than any other code (though not without some failures). There may be useful things, capable people to look at there. There also need to be people steeped in the traditions and culture of our game because that is at the heart of what people love about rugby. Coaching at all levels needs a massive focus. Again, build on what's already here but look to bring in people with the right background from NZ (especially) but also potentially other countries. Mario Lodesma was a really good step and getting Byrne back was the same. I do think that in this country there can be a tendency to view set piece as just a means to an end, a frustrating adjunct to the game. In the north they probably go too far the other way. Cultural change to recognise the critical nature of set piece as the basis for the flashy stuff needs to happen. The great periods of Oz rugby had that under Allan Jones, Bob Dwyer and McQueen. Across the board we have a pretty useful stock of players. I don't think they are anywhere near as fit as their rivals from the UK, NZ and now (the horror of it) SA. Passing and kicking skills are not up to the standard of the best. Too many promising players are arriving at Super level with surprisingly poor passing skills, for example. These things should be relatively easy to fix. Decision making and game sense are haphazard. This is tougher to improve because it is really built up over years of playing the game. I am increasingly of the view that change needs to include the national coach and his assistants. This is hard for me because Larkham was one of the most gifted players I have seen and a wonderful competitor. Nathan Grey was a fine player and, again, a great competitor. I don't think either have really shown what it takes to do well at this level. That should not rule out them coming back later. Grey seems to be in denial about the defensive systems he uses and Larkham, whilst the Brumbies have continued to do well in a very weak Oz conference, has really not added to what Jake White built. The attack coach has also presided over an attack that Culley analysed well today. Cheika deserves credit for a fine 2015 RWC and a Bledisloe win. His employment of an Argentine to finally deal with a 10 year running sore at the scrum should also be acknowledged. But there have been really strange selection decisions throughout his tenure and he also seems unable to recognise things are not working/no longer working but once did and never worked and never will. Unless there are changes and improvements at the end of the year replacements should be sought. I am a Qld supporter but I saw what Jake White did at a Brumbies unit that had become culturally dysfunctional, that was full of underperforming players and had lost its way. At its worst Jake ball is unattractive but this was also the man who found Jesse Mogg and a host of other players and who mostly oversaw a team that played a pretty exciting brand of rugby. Someone like him would be ideal to rebuild and set standards for players. I hope that this doesn't cause Spiro Zavos to choke on his weeties - not many areas that I depart from his views but Jake White is one.

Too right. The sport is now largely the province of entitled private school kids at all levels. Passion in the jumper has apparently dissipated over time since the advent of professionalism, and the entertainment quality just ain't stacking up with rival competitions.

I met Cheika briefly after the Brumbies vs Reds match in Canberra this year. I bumped into him while he was trying to keep a low profile, but despite this he was infinitely kind and polite to both myself and to the kids who were sad not to meet the players after the match. He seems to love the Wallabies and is a super nice bloke - I just don't know if the wallabies can improve under him.