'Burned him inside': How heavyweights will handle Sydney showdown, with the main bout yet to come

Eddie Jones and Michael Cheika dance the friends-and-foes tango like few others in rugby when it comes to their classic coaching rivalry.

They’ll aim dueling pistols at each other across the halfway line at Sydney’s CommBank Stadium on Saturday night and share a Randwick club harbour cruise together the next day.

They are fiercely individual but even better when pitted against each other in a big Test match. Whichever way you cut it, either Jones’ Wallabies or Cheika’s Argentinians are going to be 0-2 and with a serious flat tyre to start the World Cup build-up by full-time on Saturday.

Outside the players, they are theatre in the own right because they care. You see it in how obviously they both hate to lose.

And that doesn’t just mean the obvious result at the end of a Test.

Jones is almost crazy on diligence. He’d booked Coogee Oval to train on in Sydney way ahead of time for England’s 2016 tour of Australia. Cheika is not so good on that nuts and bolts organising. No booking, no training on the ground where he grew up.

Eddie Jones and Michael Cheika in 2018. (Photo by Steve Bardens – RFU/The RFU Collection via Getty Images)

There you had the Wallabies coach of that time gnashing his teeth that the English coach was getting to train on his Randwick club ground.

It probably didn’t help that before the first Test of that series, Jones was given newspaper space to pick the best Wallabies team for Cheika.

The Poms won the series 3-0 and Jones blitzed Cheika in straight sets, 6-0, 6-1, 6-1, in the public forum. You almost sensed Cheika saw Jones as Yoda in those early days.

Cheika wins most arguments in any room he walks into. He’s a persuasive, luminous character with excellent language skills.

No one could win him an argument on “Cheika v Eddie” for years because it was a landslide 0-7 in Tests when their Wallabies v England period was on. It would have burned him inside.

Cheika got one back as Pumas coach when he edged England 30-29 at Twickenham last November, a result which certainly didn’t slow the RFU’s decision to axe Jones.

Cheika’s Argentinians have beaten the All Blacks more recently than have the Wallabies. He’s building gravitas as a world coach too.

Randwick club coach Stephen Hoiles, the former Wallaby, knows both figures well.

“I’ve always found Eddie and ‘Cheik’ very similar in terms of being really good players in excellent club teams at Randwick. Both had ambitions to play at the higher level beyond NSW and for various reasons didn’t,” Hoiles said. “I believe that drove them to success as coaches.

“Cheik almost followed Eddie as the glue at Randwick. At the famous touch games (played at Latham Park), Eddie would commentate in games, throw out the banter and be giving nicknames left and right.

“Cheik did the same style of thing. They are friends, they are both great for their old club and have enormous respect for each other.

“Cheik had only just landed in Sydney this week from Argentina and he was at Randwick speaking to the whole club and then first grade separately. Eddie goes out of his way for his club as well.

“Neither makes it about themselves when their teams are playing against each other. For sure, I can tell you another thing they have in common … neither likes losing.”

You can pitch any sort of theory about what style a team is going to play at a World Cup but every equation worships one word “momentum.”

Have it, like Cheika’s Wallabies did at the 2015 World Cup and you can conquer almost anything. Passes stick, moves with slick interplay come off and journeymen like Ben McCalman play Superman for a miracle minute with two tackles in one play to beat Wales in a pool game.

No dictionary meaning of the word “momentum” includes mention of going 0-5 leading into a World Cup. Not to put too fine a point on it but the Wallabies must nail the Pumas on Saturday night to taste an Eddie-style victory, see his ideas pay dividends, find confidence and get the positive spin-offs that only victory feeds.

Going into a two-Test Bledisloe Cup joust against the All Blacks with none of that in the tank is fingers-crossed stuff.

Both Jones and Cheika seem destined to define whatever World Cups they are involved in together.
It happened in 2019 when Jones’ England trounced the Wallabies in the quarter-finals and ended the Cheika reign.

Whether it’s science or the tea leaves that you favour as your personal guide in 2023, they again seem destined to collide in France later this year.

A potential Australia-Argentina quarterfinal in Marseille in mid-October is on the cards.

Whatever happens on Saturday night, it may just be the curtain-raiser to an even bigger Jones v Cheika bout in October.