Reuters
Not many New South Wales Waratahs coaches have been a position of having to dampen expectations over the last five years but 10 tries in two healthy wins to start the new Super Rugby season have left Michael Cheika with exactly that task.
Fortunately for him, the fixture list may have given him a helping hand by serving up a date with Australian conference champions ACT Brumbies in Canberra this weekend as their third match of the season.
“We’ve done nothing,” Cheika told reporters on Tuesday. “We’ve had two good games but there was a lot of faults in those games and they’ve both been at home.
“Now we’ve got to get ready to take on a team that were 15 minutes from winning the Super Rugby title last year.”
Not that Cheika is the sort of dour, calculating coach anxious to avoid leaving hostages to fortune in the media firmament so he is not embarrassed later in the season if the good start fades away.
Cheika is delighted if Waratahs fans – his own mother included – are excited by the team’s electric start after half a decade of what he politely describes as “disappointments”, as long as his players do not buy into it as well.
“If other people are cheering and hooting, that’s great, as long as we don’t,” he laughed.
“We don’t need this subdued worry, we want everyone to be happy, that’s what the game’s about.
“But we,” he added, thumping the table in front of him for emphasis. “We have to be like ‘Okay this is next, this is what we need to go and do’. That’s the important part.
“If we can do that, that’s the sign of a team that’s maturing and starting to learn how to become a winning team.”
Cheika is anticipating a “stare-off” between an “efficient” Brumbies side starting to develop more flair under new coach Steve Larkham and his own counter-attacking outfit.
More important than the result, he said, was approaching the match in the right spirit.
“Everyone can say, we want to go there and win. We want to go there and play our way, with the physicality that’s required, with the attacking play that’s required.
“If that’s good enough to win, you bewdy. And that’s what we’ve said from day one, since I came here.”
The combination of the “mongrel” of a powerful pack with a creative backline mirrors his own playing career as a rugged No 8 at the famous Randwick club, where he played alongside the likes of David Campese and the Ella brothers.
Cheika returned to his native Sydney in 2012 after a coaching career spent mostly in Europe, where he led Irish province Leinster to Heineken Cup glory and spent two less successful seasons with French Top 14 side Stade Francais.
It was made clear to him right from the start that the Waratahs needed not only to win, but win playing the sort of attacking rugby that would have the famously fickle Sydney public flocking through the turnstiles.
The ninth place finish in his first season was only a slight improvement on the previous year’s all-time low and sell-out crowds are still a long way away, but there is no doubting the sense of optimism among the Waratahs hardcore.
Part of that is clearly to do with the presence in the side of the potent Israel Folau, the code-hopping fullback who has already scored five tries in the two matches, and the supremely gifted but often wayward Kurtley Beale.
“It’s nice, obviously,” said Cheika. “One of the big things they can do is create something out of nothing.
“That’s a gift not all players have. I know I certainly didn’t, I could usually make nothing out of something.
“I hope they feel free to play without worrying about the consequences because I don’t want the team to worry about losing, I want them to think about what we’re going to do to win.”
That attitude will mark his team’s approach to Saturday’s game in the nation’s capital, especially if the Brumbies kick the leather off the ball to pin the Waratahs to their line in the hope of forcing errors from the backs.
“It’s a question for us of whether we say ‘aw, let’s not make a mistake’, or ‘let’s go out there and counter-attack hard and do our best to play footie’,” Cheika said.
“I think you know which one we’re going to choose, so we’ll see how good we are.”
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