Michael Cheika
He’s loath to talk about dynasties and sustained dominance, but NSW Waratahs coach Michael Cheika is already plotting a path to back-to-back Super Rugby titles.
With a season remaining on his three-year contract, Cheika laughed off speculation he could be heading off to coach the Argentine national team after guiding the Waratahs to their Holy Grail.
“What, for a holiday? No, I’m here. We’re well into our planning for next season,” Cheika said after the Waratahs’ last-gasp 33-32 win over the Crusaders in Saturday night’s final.
AAP
After leading Leinster to European Cup glory in 2009, Cheika is the first coach to win the southern hemisphere equivalent.
He is very much sought after, with cashed-up French club Toulon also reportedly prepared to throw hundreds of thousands at the 47-year-old.
Cheika, though, remains very much committed to the Waratahs.
“As opposed to speaking about how good everyone is, I would like to speak about how much I’ve enjoyed coaching them with our management guys, with our trainers,” he said.
“I’ve really enjoyed being involved with them because they’re very passionate about winning and playing a certain style of game.”
“They’re using their skill and their craft with that little bit of extra passion attached and they’re trying to give themselves a better product so the team can be better in the end.”
“I really enjoy working with people like that because they give you extra energy.”
Cheika says it’s important to give his winners ample time to recuperate mentally as much as physically from their triumphant campaign before charging head first into another demanding pre-season.
The canny coach said his big task now was to “get the guys interested in a new challenge and sell them a bit of that story”.
“I’ve got a bit of time about how we’re going to do that and just be very true to the core values,” Cheika said.
“We don’t want to change them every year. We want them to be the same and we just want to be really good at what our things are.
“Then if we can be good at those, have the ability to maybe turn the volume up when we need to into next season.”
“It will take a bit of planning and I’m not going to say it’s going to be easy. It’ll definitely be harder: how we manage with expectation.”
Selling the next challenge to the Waratahs should be a snack, given the way Cheika cunningly lured Crusaders great Daryl Gibson to Sydney to be his assistant coach last year.
“When Michael came and saw me in Christchurch, he sold me on his vision and I hadn’t known him at that stage,” Gibson said.
“I left that meeting thinking he’s a good guy and I could really coach for him and I really liked what he was about.”
“Obviously I looked at the NSW roster. It was a very good one and one you could say you could do something with.”
“It was pretty compelling.”
And when the final was on the line on Saturday night, it was Crusaders legend and now NSW kicking coach Andrew Mehrtens sitting in the stands with his stomach churning, not knowing what to hope for as Waratahs five-eighth Bernard Foley lined up the match-winning penalty goal.
“I love the irony of the situation,” Cheika said.
And you can bet he planned for it too.