Michael Cheika has seen enough All Blacks rugby this season. The 49 year old Australia head coach has not sat through Chicago or last Saturday's bruising bloodbath at the Aviva stadium.
"Mate, I haven't seen either of the games yet," said Cheika at (the usual) 8am media session in the Conrad hotel. "That's not my job really. The other boys have that covered. Stephen Larkham, Nathan (Grey), Mick (Byrne). They do all that. I try to concentrate on our team."
Larkham, one of the great Wallaby fly-halves, and already marked by Cheika as his heir apparent while Grey was that hard-hitting centre during the 2001 Lions tour. Sam Cane has nothing on him as Brian O'Driscoll can attest.
Mick 'The Kick' Byrne is a special, not so secret, weapon who coached in Leinster before anyone ever heard of Chieka. Matt Williams had Byrne over and brought him to Scotland before the All Blacks swooped.
The 57-year-old’s 22-year Aussie Rules career as a ruckman makes him one of the most uniquely skilled skills coach in rugby union. Cheika’s Wallabies stole him back this season.
“I’ve seen highlights, obviously,” he continued. “They look like they were good encounters. What I can glean from it all is the fact we got our work cut out for us as (Ireland) got closer to (New Zealand) in the two games then we did in the three games.”
The bitter tasting residue from Australia's 37-10 defeat at Eden Park on October 22nd surpasses what Irish players, coaches and supporters are still feeling after Saturday's 21-9 loss. For starters, replace the name Jaco Peyper with Nigel Owens as New Zealand ran in highly questionable scores that put refereeing the world champions under the microscope. There was also a seemingly clear incident of eye gouging in the August meeting that was not cited.
Then the New Zealand Herald dressed Cheika up in a Wallaby clad clown suit.
“It was on the front page, bro,” he said last month.
Send them in, screamed the headline. There was also a suggestion of bugging team rooms. Nah mate, ditch relations are far worse than the current Kiwi-Irish toxicity, even considering the ultra defensive New Zealand media lacerating their "bitter Irish" counterparts (and supporters reaction on twitter) for complaining about the multiple high tackles in a truly violent Test match. They went so far as to label the "hysterical" complaining as "true Irish fashion" and had a swipe at RTE's post-match presenter Claire McNamara for doing her job correctly by asking Steve Hansen all the pertinent questions.
Cheika will not be going back down that road this week, nor will Joe Schmidt (private correspondence to match official assessors is presumably where it ends despite CJ Stander, Robbie Henshaw and Rob Kearney undergoing return to play protocols for head injuries).
“We got a lot of new lads on our trip,” Cheika moved on, “getting them to learn how difficult it is to win over here. The northern hemisphere teams buoyed by their home crowds are very difficult to beat.”
So far so good. Having been whitewashed by Eddie Jones’ superior England in June (3-0) and suffering the same fate against New Zealand, Cheika’s Wallabies recovered to beat South Africa and Argentina, before defeat in Auckland was followed by November victories over Wales (32-8), Scotland (23-22) and France.
“We are resetting today and saying this is going to be the biggest game of the tour, without a doubt.”
We believe him, but Australia must drag creaking bodies into December with a ridiculously punishing end of year Test match, number 12 in six months, at Twickenham against Jones’ England. 46 players are touring this month alone as Australia also face the French Barbarians in Bordeaux on Thursday.
