Michael Cheika: Grief? Eddie Jones had the red carpet rolled out for him in Australia

Long before the former Australia head coach, who steered the Wallabies to the final in 2015, takes charge of Argentina in France next autumn, he will oversee Lebanon’s campaign at the delayed rugby league global gathering this year.

Born in Sydney to Lebanese immigrant parents in 1967, Cheika is honouring a commitment he gave to the Cedars long before the Pumas came calling, and the scheduling of the rearranged tournament has thrown up a delicious, unprecedented prospect. Should Lebanon repeat what they managed in 2017 and make it out of their pool, their quarter-final is likely to be on Friday, November 4 or, possibly, the following day in Hull or Huddersfield. That Sunday, Argentina are at Twickenham to play England in both countries’ opening autumn international.

“Yup, I’d be doing both,” Cheika says, smiling down the line from San Juan in western Argentina, where his Pumas face the Wallabies in their second Rugby Championship match tonight (Saturday). “It would be the league Test on the Friday night, then the union Test on the Sunday. It would be pretty cool if that happens.

“To be able to coach both games at the same time will be something really strange but really special too. I have to make sure I’m doing them both to my absolute best ability. It’s one thing doing everything, it’s another doing them well and successfully. And enjoying them too.

“It’s 24/7, you’ve got to love that - and I do. There are times when you crash and burn, you have a drop down, then you get back up, get back on it and recover. There are times where you just get so overloaded. But they are all such great challenges.”

Cheika has a third gig, as director of rugby at the Japanese club NEC Green Rockets Tokatsu, who won plaudits in the most recent Top League season by securing survival against the odds. Cheika will be back in the Chiba prefecture next year and then it’s on to the (union) World Cup, after which Felipe Contepomi will step up from his support staff to become head coach of the Pumas.

Cheika’s tenure began with a hard-fought 2-1 series win over Scotland last month, and they led Australia until the 65th minute in Mendoza last week, only for a final-quarter collapse to condemn them to a 41-26 defeat. The biggest talking point was the absence of the Wallaby skipper Michael Hooper - Cheika’s captain on that run to the 2015 final - who pulled out on the eve of the match because he did not feel “able to fulfil my responsibilities at the moment in my current mindset”.

Dave Rennie, who succeeded Cheika in 2020, said: “He’s shown true courage by acknowledging where he is at and acting on it,” and the former Leinster, Stade Francais and New South Wales Waratahs head coach fully agrees. “It’s not good what’s happening, obviously, and I hope that everything settles down soon,” Cheika says. “There are different times you go through in this world: you’re very exposed all the time. You’ve got to have thick skin, not just about criticism, just about driving the machine like he has. He is an absolute machine that guy, and he has done it for years, solidly.

“Sometimes those moments come and you get challenged, internally. I’ve had them myself: moments where you feel like you’re not up for it, or you’re not good enough and you’ve got to turn around and drive yourself. Sometimes the scenarios make that nearly impossible.

“There is no doubt that, as a society, we are understanding these matters a bit better, which is great, and we’re able to act on those with a view to getting better.”

Cheika was disappointed with how the Pumas fell away, but is right to highlight the uniquely challenging environment that has confronted his squad during and after the pandemic. With the Jaguares franchise having bitten the dust, most of the Argentina squad now play their club rugby in Europe or, in the case of the captain Pablo Matera, Super Rugby, the tournament he recently won with the Crusaders.

They came together at painfully short notice this summer, but Cheika has plans to address this by holding pre-World Cup camps in Europe.

After a number of years where the Pumas have lacked identity - equally unconvincing when they tried to become more expansive under Daniel Hourcade as when Mario Ledesma sought to bring them back to traditional strengths - Cheika is on the trail of a happy medium.

“You need the balance. At this level you need to have a bit of everything,” he says. “The challenge that nobody is really dealing with like the Pumas is players playing in the northern hemisphere and then in the southern hemisphere. South Africa are doing it, but in a system where they can control how much a lot of the players are playing.

“Many of the decisions we are making now around how players are involved at different times is with a view to looking at 2023 and how they will turn up, where they will get breaks etc. It’s a balancing act.

“Is it strange to coach against Australia? I had a couple of practice goes, being involved [on Ledesma’s staff] in 2020 and 2021. When I’m involved with a team, it’s a full immersion. You’ve got to put yourself in a position where you are always motivating, you’ve got to be up every day for people. You’re always leading the camp around your energy.”

At the World Cup, Argentina are in Pool D alongside Japan, Samoa, Chile and England. Their opening match in Marseilles on September 9 next year pits Cheika against Eddie Jones, his old Randwick teammate with whom he has enjoyed many verbal jousts but not many successes - Jones’s England won seven straight clashes against Cheika’s Australia, the last of which, in the 2019 World Cup quarter-finals, was his final match in charge.

There were flashpoints when Jones took his team down under this summer, with a number of Australia fans at the Sydney Cricket Ground being caught on camera abusing him.

“That was maybe one or two guys giving him grief, and that’s it,” Cheika says, smiling. “From what I saw, he got the bloody red carpet. He was down in Coogee in my area, and the council were letting them train more than they would the local team.

“Do I owe him [after those seven defeats]? In this game you don’t get paid anything you are supposedly owed, mate. You’ve got to go and do it. But behind the scenes it comes down to making sure you’re on, on your game on that day. Eddie will be thinking about it the same way. One of the good things about the World Cup is that the pools have become very challenging, all of them. If you go back 20 years it maybe wasn’t as challenging in the pools, but now …

“Having experienced the 2015 World Cup with Australia in a very difficult pool, there is almost something beautiful about that. It’s the World Cup, get in there.

“You’ve just got to have your game built when you get there, be ready. Don’t think what’s happening too far down the road, just look at the next game. For us, at this stage, the World Cup is just that first game against England.”

-The Times

Originally published as Michael Cheika: Grief? Eddie Jones had the red carpet rolled out for him in Australia