Amirite,
Yes Cheika has been in 2 successful environments. He can't be a bad coach that says.
But you have to look at the environments. Leinster had failed to make the HC Quarter Finals or further only once before Cheika took over. They also finished 3rd in the Celtic League the year before he took over.
Clearly he's been an influence on that success but perhaps it helped him being in a reasonably successful environment, to enable him to have that influence.
He then went on to be fired by Stade Francais which we know is a pre-requisite to becoming a Wallaby coach now.
He improved the Waratahs from where Foley was. But he also benefited from a large influx of already capped internationals and marquee recruits (Folau) in those first 2 seasons.
We can all agree Foley would not have taken the 2014 Waratahs to a title, or probably even the finals. But had he been able to add the following players to his squad they would have been much stronger:
* Michael Hooper
* Nick Phipps
* Jacques Potgeiter
* Kurtley Beale
* Stephen Hoiles
Considering they were probably 5 of the Waratahs 6 best players (Foley being the 6th) this is a significant factor.
Cheika deserves credit for luring Potgeiter. He was an astute recruitment.
But the other 4 starting players fell into his lap merely because they had the desire to return to Sydney now they had the experience to command starting positions, or in Hoiles case, returned injured and agreed to train for free.
So my point? Clearly the bloke aint hopeless, but he also benefited from reasonable bases or good players wanting to join his squad for reasons that he did not create.
As for the Wallabies coaching. Clearly it's time for a change.
With regards to the Head Coach clearly there is not candidate who appears to be close to, let alone better than Cheika. So the change in the Head Coach needs to be a change in Cheika.
A change from the petulance and constant victim mentality. I spent the first decade of my career in construction and I liken Cheika to the Site Manager that yells alot. At first you are taken back by it, but after a while when he's yelling all the time that's just considered normal. It doesn't get a reaction anymore and loses it's impact.
Cheika is too emotional and appears to coach on emotion too much. This cannot be sustained year around. That's why first year players seem to have an impact at test level, but no players seem to consistently maintain a high level over his tenure. You can't be emotionally up all the time.
So Cheika needs to be smarter and more measured with this approach and be aware if he is fever pitch all the time there's no way to escalate things from this.
One of the best approaches I can remember from any coach that I was ever coached by was summed up by what he said before the start of the season. His words were that when people watched us train, they wouldn't know whether we had won by 100 points on the weekend or lost by 100 points. We had a plan in place that we were training to and we weren't just reacting to how we had played the last weekend. If we won that didn't mean we could go easy and likewise if we lost it didn't mean we weren't working hard enough and were going to be flogged at training to try and make up for it.
To me that is a professional approach. You may alter your tactics and your focusing depending on results but don't make emotionally reactive decisions based on a single game.
I'd like to see a more pragmatic approach by Cheika similar to McKenzie at times, where he tried to determine the best way to approach opposition.
In regards to the coaching group I think we all agree the real change needs to come with the assistants.
Nathan Grey surely must be under scrutiny. From my count the Wallabies have let in an average of 3 tries per game. That is surely unacceptable defensively and the defensive coach has to own a lot of this.
Likewise with Larkham. The Wallabies attack simply has not been capable of attacking to the level required. With 65% possession and 68% territory the Wallabies managed to score 2 tries (Giving credit for the disallowed try because that was not a fault of the attack's ability).
We have scored 2.2 tries per game across the test season and that stat is boosted up by 4 games.
Right now there needs to be consideration of alternatives and at the end of the EOYT there should be a decision made going forward based on how these two and their areas of responsibility have performed in 2016.
