Michael Cheika interview: ‘What I’m doing is pleasure and passion’

It's been striking to behold the contrasting moods of the Australia and England head coaches in advance of tonight's momentous collision. Stuart Lancaster has been lying awake at night in the wake of losing to Wales and will cop the blame if the hosts exit the tournament, while Michael Cheika has been merrily taking the heat off his players and playing the "World Cup novice" card to the hilt.

Despite Thursday's 8am start, the Wallabies head coach is in jovial spirits. He reveals he texted Johnny Sexton last week, quipping that the Irish outhalf was so good now he had to be "wrapped in cotton wool" rather than play Romania. "He wasn't happy," bellows Cheika with a laugh.

Cheika has also sought to revive a sense of enjoyment to the Wallabies’ game, combined, of course, with hard work. Cheika’s guiding principle will no doubt still strike a cord with former players under his watch when he became Leinster’s fourth coach in four years in the summer of 2005, with the province at a low ebb.

"Work hard. Team spirit. Play good footy. Get stuck in. All the old values that have been the same; and then building an identity, like who we are. And this is what we went through at Leinster as well. 'Who are we? Are we really the cappuccino-drinking D4s or are we something bigger than that?' And I think they've shown once they've got clear on the identity, that they are bigger than that.

“For this Australian team, it’s the same thing. Every player playing rugby in Australia, they want to look up to their idols, and we’ve got to give them something that they truly want to look up to and be proud of. And that’s been the case.”

Source of pride

Cheika's influence still resonates around Leinster for establishing the professional platform on which Joe Schmidt built the province's most successful years. This is a source of pride to Cheika.

“Yeah, very much so, and it’s the reverse as well for me. They gave me the opportunity to develop and had the patience to stick with me. They didn’t give in to the other pressures that were around back them. Even though I haven’t been back there a lot, I still feel very close to those guys and the club as a whole. I still have good conversations with Mick [Dawson, CEO] and many of the players.

“I had three kids there and we have a fourth now too, born in Australia. They have Irish passports. We’re very, very connected. I can’t help it.”

Again, not dissimilarly, when he took over the Wallabies less than a year ago, they were at a low ebb after the sudden departure of Ewen McKenzie and his staff. It was hardly ideal timing.

“I just think they lacked a bit of belief. They’d been hit over the head with a big stick by many people, for on-field and off-field stuff for many years, and that’s going to have an effect. We worked hard changing our game, and as well as changing our game, getting much more mentally ready for the challenge.

“And we’ve still got a way to go, but we’re in a good spot. The team is really enjoying its own company, and we’ve built a really good work ethic. We’re getting more physical. Just like I said, the old-school values of footy.”

You wonder where and why he obtained those values. “Mate, I just think from growing up and playing in that type of environment,” he says, before crediting Randwick and Leinster again, citing in particularly his chats with Enda McNulty.

Entreaties from the Australian press officer are also politely waved away by Cheika. He promised The Irish Times an interview, and as well as being true to his word, he clearly places a high premium on loyalty.

Cheika inspires loyalty too. The story goes that before the end of his second and last season at Stade Francais, 2011-12, when the ex-Pumas hooker Mario Ledesma (whom Cheika had made scrum coach that season) was asked onto a new coaching ticket by a coach and players who plotting against Cheika, Ledesma not only declined to do so, but informed Cheika and then went to Montpellier.

In 2015, Ledesma accepted Cheika’s invitation to join the Waratahs’ set-up, and is now the Wallabies’ scrum coach, where he has helped transform an Achilles heel of many years into a strength.

A gritty, athletic number eight, Cheika played over 300 times for Randwick and New South Wales, after representing Australia at under-21 level, before a mid-career switch to European rugby when joining Castres. From there he moved to Paris and Livorno in Italy.

Coaching the Wallabies only makes him realise how much he would love to have played for them too.

“Yeah, for sure, but I think that a lot of the stuff that I’ve talked to the players about comes from the experience of guilt of my own, when I ran away from it. I didn’t want the challenge because I always had the excuse – I didn’t come from the right school or I didn’t have the right ‘prep’ going in or played rugby league growing up.

“I always looked for an excuse as to why they wouldn’t pick me as opposed to staying there and fighting.

“So I chose to go overseas and play rugby and always had the excuse ‘I’m doing this’ or ‘I’m doing that’. I believe now it was my own fault. I should have stayed there and gone head-to-toe with whoever was in that position and stuck at it, if I really wanted it that badly.

“Those things I’m doing with rugby now, the mental side, are helping me also discover about myself as well. I wouldn’t change anything from what’s happened. I’m blessed to be in the situations I’ve been in and the opportunities I’ve had. I really am.

“One day I’m going to have to get a proper job, do you know what I mean? And be like everyone else, because you can’t consider this as a job. It’s a passion and a pleasure, and it always has been, and you’ve got to learn about yourself along the way, which is what I’m trying to do.”

Negotiate the route

Cheika came from a non-stereotypical rugby upbringing. His Lebanese father Joseph emigrated to Sydney when only he was 20 in 1950, at a time when it took seven days and countless flights to negotiate the route. He had received an MBE for his services to the Lebanese community, but never saw his parents again after emigrating. He eventually married a Lebanese girl, after meeting her in Sydney 10 years later. Cheika has one brother, Paul (a prop who played with him at Randwick), and a sister, Carol.

Back in 2006, in an interview with The Irish Times, Cheika spoke of his father's homeland. "The Lebanon is one of the few places in the world where I've been able to see such a mix of cultures. I think Turkey might be the only other place I've been to where you really get the crossover of the Occidental and the Eastern influence, and they merge together. You get the mosque and the church next door to each other, and all the different foods, the French influence from the colonialism, it's all there.

“And it’s been totally f**ked up by everybody else playing world games there, without getting too political about it. The Lebanon hasn’t got much to offer in terms of oil or minerals, it’s just a beautiful place.”

His father quickly became an avid rugby fan, after young Michael initially took to rugby league at his school Marcellin before following his brother up to Randwick.

Lebanese extraction

For an Aussie of Lebanese extraction to become Wallabies’ coach is also “a very big thing for me. We’re very connected back there and I know that if nothing else there are a lot more Australian-Lebanese interested in rugby now. I see them out there now and then giving me a yell,” he says, laughing.

“I am very proud of my heritage. In this Australian team, we’ve done a lot of work on that. We’ve become a very multicultural Australian team; Fijian, Tongan, Samoan, New Zealand, Irish – Stephen Moore’s parents are very Irish – there’s a big mix. Michael Hooper’s dad is English. David Pocock is from Zimbabwe.

“It’s very representative of what Australia is, and it’s something we’ve work on because we can’t all say we’re Dinky-dis [Australian slang for someone originating from Down Under]. Our voyages to Australia been for a reason, because of the country that it is and why we love it, and that’s what we want to try to represent. And it’s been a really good discovery for me about nationalism, parochialism; maybe something I didn’t really appreciate as much beforehand.”

Wales had an advantage in their coaches box at Twickenham last week, and one senses the Wallabies will have as well.