Michael Cheika on playing at Dubai Sevens and honouring his Lebanese roots

Former Australia union coach will oversee Lebanon’s challenge in rugby league’s World Cup again next year

Australia head coach Michael Cheika passes to Nic White during a training session at the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan. Getty Images

It takes a special kind of talent to drop in and coach a side in a World Cup in one sport, having achieved almost all there is to while coaching in another.

Happily, Michael Cheika is adept at multitasking. After all, he did build a multimillion dollar business in the women’s fashion industry, just as a sideline to his career as a player and then high-achieving coach in rugby union.

He can give interviews in Arabic, French, Italian, and ocker-Aussie English.

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Next year he will take Lebanon to the Rugby League World Cup for the second time, having overseen Australia’s journey to the 2015 Rugby World Cup final in the other code.

Defeat in that, against New Zealand at Twickenham, was a rare dropped stitch in the career of a serial winner. He was the first coach to win the premier club competitions in both hemispheres, with Irish province Leinster and the Waratahs in Super Rugby.

He recalls another lost final, too, although not quite so much was riding on it. In 1991, playing on sand pitches rolled flat at the now extinct Exiles ground in Al Awir, his Warblers side lost the final of the Dubai Sevens to Queensland.

Australia head coach Michael Cheika ahead of the 2019 Rugby World Cup quarter-final against England in Japan. Reuters

This was long before the inception of the World Sevens Series, where national teams jet in from all over the globe and play in front of thousands of fans, as well as a live TV audience.

Cheika’s side, the Warblers, were an invitational outfit based in Bahrain, and he does not even know how they got his number to ask him to play. He was glad of the call, though.

“Someone just rang me one day and said, ‘Do you want to come and play?’ I ended up going two or three years in a row and made lifelong friends with people,” Cheika said.

“I still keep in touch with some of the players I played with then today. We would go to Bahrain, play a XVs game and then the international players, of which I was one, would come to Dubai.”

He was back in the city this weekend, speaking at a function which marks the start of the lead-up to the latest incarnation of the Sevens. It is a world away from what it was like back then.

After his brief trip to the UAE, he was heading to Europe, then back to the Middle East to Beirut. That was part of his assignment as Lebanon’s rugby league head coach, although the majority of the side will again be drawn from the migrant communities of Sydney.

It was there that Cheika was born to Lebanese parents who had immigrated to Australia in the 1950s. Which is the reason for his grasp of the language.

“My parents would speak to me in Arabic, and I would answer in English,” he said. “I went to Lebanon with my mum when I was five, and they said that when I came back home after that I couldn’t speak English anymore.

Lebanon head coach Michael Cheika ahead of the Rugby League World Cup quarter-final against Australia at John Smith's Stadium in Huddersfield, England, on November 4, 2022. Getty Images

“As a result I have always had a bit of an ear for [Arabic] and I have tried to keep it up as much as possible. I remember in the 2015 World Cup doing some basic Arabic interviews.”

Cheika’s dad was honoured with an MBE for services to the Lebanese community in Australia. His son is grateful for the chance to honour his own roots by coaching their rugby league team.

“People would go out to Australia for a reason: to get a new life,” Cheika said. “And sport was used by immigrants of that era to integrate within the community a bit better.

“We were always immersed in sports, but were always encouraged to keep our Lebanese heritage. Australia is like that.

“With sports in Australia, Lebanese people have been more in rugby league because of the working-class nature of immigration. Rugby [union] was different at the time I did it.”

He said the contact nature of the sport initially felt foreign to the Lebanese migrants arriving in Sydney, and took some getting used to.

“My cousin was living in Brazil. He came over to Australia in 1988 and Randwick, my club team, was playing the All Blacks,” Cheika said.

“It was the first game of their tour and they were playing at Coogee. It was my first year in first grade, and he came to watch. He left at half-time, saying to my dad, ‘This is barbaric!’

“But because of the tough nature of the people, once they understand the law and order behind the game, they really buy into it, and the way the game is played, and the lifestyle that goes with it. They enjoy that a lot.”

The Lebanon side Cheika took to the 2021 Rugby League World Cup – which was played in 2022 due to Covid – reached the quarter-finals, where they were beaten by perennial champions Australia.

The wider squad included five Lebanon-based players, with the others being drawn from the Lebanese community in Australia.

Cheika hopes their exploits are celebrated back home in Beirut and beyond, and that it will help spread both codes in the country.

“I was so happy that I have been able to give back to my heritage in my area of expertise,” Cheika said. “I understand I am coaching in league but hopefully that will have an effect in union because a lot of the boys do both.

“The more that sport can be played in that region the better because it is part of normal life – and normal life is not what they always get over there.”