For many rugby fans the enduring image of Michael Cheika is of a scowling figure in the coach’s box, railing at the heavens as the Australian national team crashed to yet another defeat.
These days, however, Cheika is finding it hard to wipe the smile from his face.
Michael Cheika
Photo: PHOTOSPORT
“Right now I’m really loving what’s going on with my footy,” he tells the ABC during one of his frequent whirlwind visits to Australia.
There has been a remarkable turnaround in the fortunes of Michael Cheika since he quit as Wallabies head coach three years ago, following the team’s poor performance at the 2019 World Cup, the howls of disappointed fans ringing in his ears.
He now finds himself in greater demand than ever, juggling three different coaching jobs in three different countries and two different codes.
He’s director of rugby with a Japanese team, the head coach of Argentina’s national team and, intriguingly, head coach of Lebanon’s rugby league team as they head into this week’s World Cup in Britain.
It’s why Cheika currently finds himself in a state of perpetual motion, crisscrossing the globe, constantly jet-lagged and barely able to spend a moment with his long-suffering wife Stephanie and their four children, who are currently based in the south of France.
“I’ve never seen that many plates spinning at once,” says Lebanon’s assistant coach Matt King.
“It’s just unbelievable. He just moves from one job to another.”
‘I don’t want to show people who I am’
On the face of it, Cheika’s decision to coach Lebanon’s national team, the Cedars, is a baffling one.
Lebanon fans at the 2017 Rugby League World Cup
Photo: PHOTOSPORT
He has never coached rugby league before and Lebanon is ranked a lowly 13th going into a World Cup that generates little excitement compared with rival tournaments in football and rugby. It’s hardly a prestige gig.
But Michael Cheika has always delighted in confounding expectations.
He’s the notoriously tough – and by his own admission selfish – player who went on to become an inspirational coach, capable of galvanising a disparate group of players and getting them to play above their station.
He’s the physically imposing character with scarred head and cauliflower ears who speaks five languages and worked for fashion designer Collette Dinnigan before making his fortune importing designer jeans.
And he’s the short-fused firebrand famous for mid-game dressing downs and post-match dummy spits who is devoted to his family and who his wife Stephanie describes as “a big softy”.
Will the real Michael Cheika please stand up.
“There’s no obligation on me to show who I am,” says Cheika, displaying that uneasy mix of defensiveness and combativeness that has characterised his relationship with the media over the years. “Maybe I don’t want to show people who I am.”
“He’ll often play this thing of, ‘Oh, I’m just a dumb footy player’,” says former Wallaby and recently elected senator David Pocock.
“But he’s sharp and he uses that. And I think people underestimate him.”
Cheika’s ‘passion project’
There are several factors that explain why Cheika has taken on this role with the Cedars when he has so much else on his plate.
For a start, Michael Cheika is fiercely proud of his Lebanese heritage and how his parents came here from Lebanon with so little and created such a comfortable life for him and his two older siblings, Caroline and Paul.
“My dad left Lebanon to start a different life and a better life for himself and then for us and that’s a massive risk,” Cheika says. “I saw those lessons from my dad – not be scared to take risks. To go on the offence. Don’t stay on the defence.
“Coaching a team that my dad, mum, the country they were born in, is something I never thought I’d get a chance to do, and I want to make sure that I do the best I can so that people can be proud of what happens on the field.”
The job of Cedars coach is also a lot closer to home than you might think.
“The talent here in Australia around rugby league is clearly going to be greater than it is in Lebanon,” explains assistant coach Matt King.
“So the national team for Lebanon is clearly going to come out of Sydney. The best players for Lebanon will come out of Sydney.”
Cheika never planned to juggle two head coaching jobs simultaneously. The Rugby League World Cup was supposed to be held in October last year but was postponed due to the pandemic.
At that point Cheika was on the coaching staff of the Pumas but never dreamed he’d end up in the top job. When that offer came in March this year, the chance to lead another national team to a Rugby World Cup was an opportunity too great to turn down and Argentina’s management was understanding about his prior commitment to Lebanon.
“It’s a passion project, obviously,” says Cheika of his role with the Cedars.
“It’s something about heritage and where we’re from and I think the Argentinian guys really like that – that’s part of who they are as people as well. So they were very accommodating.”
Michael Cheika with the media
Photo: PHOTOSPORT
The ‘outsider’ motivated by a challenge
There is, perhaps, a deeper reason for Cheika’s interest in the Cedars, who few see going far in the upcoming tournament. Cheika’s always had a soft spot for the underdog and loves to overcome low expectations
His greatest coaching successes – Irish club Leinster winning Europe’s top rugby competition in 2009, the NSW Waratahs winning the Super Rugby in 2014 and the Wallabies making the World Cup final in 2015 – all came when was able to turnaround an underperforming team by getting them to believe in themselves and unite behind a common story.
It’s hard not to see the seeds of this love of the underdog in his background.
The much-loved youngest child in a close family, Michael Cheika grew up with a strong sense of self, confident and comfortable in his own skin. But at the same time there’s an edge to Cheika, a defensiveness, a chip on the shoulder, that speaks of dislocation.
“I think being of migrant origins, there is sometimes a sense that you don’t belong here and you don’t belong there,” says his cousin Marie-Claude Mallat.
A sense of being an outsider has informed much of Cheika’s life. He felt that as an olive-skinned boy growing up in the seaside suburb of Coogee; as a rugby player of Lebanese heritage viewed suspiciously by the game’s authorities; and as a prickly, volatile rugby coach in a code that values decorum and convention over displays of high emotion.
He shrugs off questions about the racism he encountered growing up, preferring to see it as a motivating force rather than an obstacle.
“Racism I think it’s obviously there,” Cheika says. “You know, ‘wog, you wog’ and all that type of stuff. But you want to beat that tag to get something done for you and for your people.
“I’ve put myself in situations, probably subconsciously, that have been difficult to be in with my background so I could try and triumph in those and make, I suppose, my mum and dad and that generation who probably got more racism against them than we did proud of how we’re able to overcome that.”
Cheika is aware of the tensions and conflicting impulses that inform his sense of identity.
“When I say, yes, I do feel like an outsider, that’s my perception on things. Now, whether my perception on things is right or wrong can never be judged really. I still felt I was an outsider when I was the coach of the national team. You couldn’t get more on the inside.
“This is extremely ironic but you’re motivated to do things that are then going to make the people who you think are making you an outsider happy. Go figure. Like, is that crazy or what? But that’s part of wanting to belong.”
Michael Cheika wins the Heineken Cup with Leinster in 2009
Photo: PHOTOSPORT
‘You’ve got to play above your weight’
Michael Cheika likes to win. Every coach does, of course, but Cheika’s antipathy for losing is legendary.
When he took on the job as Wallabies coach in 2014, the team had a dream run. But in the years leading up to the 2019 World Cup, things went from bad to worse and the losses far outweighed the wins.
“There’s times where they’ve had a big loss I would actually just take the kids out from nine until six or whatever I can do,” Stephanie Cheika says. “He’d just be quiet on the couch, saying nothing for a day or two. And then he’ll get over it. Well, as much as he can. I don’t think he ever gets over it.”
A sense of chaos surrounded the team and Cheika lost the confidence of management and fans. Cheika developed a reputation as a sore loser, too ready to rail at referees or jump down the throats of journalists. It’s a tag he’s willing to accept.
“Sore loser? Yeah, for sure. Like, who likes losing?” Cheika says.
“Have I crossed the line sometimes? Yes, for sure. There’s no way I’m going to say I haven’t crossed the line. With the right intent? Yeah, maybe. But then there’s been many, many times where I haven’t crossed the line or I’ve kept silent or there’s been things I’ve wanted to say but I haven’t.”
One suspects Michael Cheika will need to absorb a few more losses over the coming weeks.
The Cedars open their World Cup campaign against tournament heavyweights New Zealand and that will doubtless be a bruising encounter. But if they can beat the other teams in their group, Ireland and Jamaica, they make the quarterfinals and will dare to dream.
“Like any World Cup, it’s a knockout competition so you want to just think about the next thing that’s in front of you,” Cheika says.
“The low expectations are from others, not from ourselves. When you play for your national team, you’ve got to lift the level, you’ve got to play above your weight.”
“I’d never put a cap or a ceiling on what we can achieve,” says King, whose experience coaching the Sydney Roosters in the NRL has been invaluable to Cheika since he took on the Cedars job.
“I’m just dreaming about the boys walking out beside the Kiwis, kicking off a ball and then let’s just see where this wave takes us.”
Michael Cheika at the 2015 Rugby World Cup
Photo: photosport
Unfinished business in World Cup pursuit
As much as this team means to Michael Cheika, there’s a greater goal on the horizon. Next year the Rugby World Cup takes place in France and Cheika will be there with Argentina.
He’s never won a World Cup and will be hoping to go one better than he did in 2015, when he took a resurgent Wallabies to the final, only to be beaten by New Zealand.
“They’re a great team, Argentina,” Cheika says. “This is an opportunity we’ve got together to try and win a World Cup and that’s the missing piece at the moment. So I’ll look at the opportunity I’ve got right now and try and grab it with both hands.”
As for whether he still covets his former job as Wallabies head coach, he won’t be drawn. Perhaps it’s out of loyalty to the Pumas or maybe it’s because his career has always been about making the most of whatever opportunities come his way.
“I’ve never been a forward planner,” he says. “I’ve always felt like what you do now leads to what you do next and how well you perform and the difference you can make. So that’s up to me.
“I’ve got the opportunity and I’ll make the difference with Argentina and do the best I can with them to achieve the goals that we have together and then we’ll see what happens from there.”
-ABC
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