Old faces, new ideas: Cheika’s plan to revive the Waratahs

Incoming Waratahs coach Michael Cheika is promising a bold new approach in his second stint in charge of NSW, adamant he will not be using the platform to audition for another crack at the Wallabies job.

Flanked by assistant coaches Wycliff Palu and Stephen Hoiles at Allianz Stadium on Wednesday, Cheika also revealed a direct pitch from Rugby Australia boss Phil Waugh convinced him to take on the job he walked away from in 2015.

Cheika – who guided NSW to the Super Rugby title in 2014 – joins the Waratahs on a one-year deal, fresh from winning the NRL premiership as an assistant coach with the Sydney Roosters. He also oversaw Lebanon’s Rugby League World Cup campaign which ended with a dramatic win over France on Sunday.

“It’s more than 10 years later [since the Waratahs’ Super Rugby title] ... so I want to show them something new, right? I want to show them another way to do things that I think – I’m not guessing, I suppose, but I’m imagining that they haven’t experienced before,” Cheika said.

“There’ll be some things I’m going to do this year that I haven’t even done before.

“So, yeah, I want to do things differently because I want to get a different outcome. So I think that this is a very new adventure. I’m not going back to the 2014 or 2015 playbook and trying to reinvent that at all ... as far as footy’s concerned, I want to create a new picture, a completely new picture.”

Since leaving the Waratahs job in 2015, Cheika coached the Wallabies and had stints in Argentina, Japan and English rugby.

He is adamant he has no designs on using his time at NSW to get back into coaching Australia.

“There are no springboards [to a Wallabies coaching job], I’m coming here to get this team to try and win the comp. Isn’t that what we want to do at the end of the day? That’s it,” Cheika said.

“I’ve always been like this, it’s what you do now and where you are now, how you perform, even when I was a player overseas, I’d have a one-year contract. If I play good, well, then I’m in charge. If I play rubbish, you can get rid of me. That’s fair.

“And I’ve got to be judging my own performance here now, not on what’s happened in the past, not on what could happen in the future ... I just think I really want it to be clear that this is where I am, where my feet are, and that’s it.”

Before deciding to return to the Waratahs, Cheika was not short of admirers in both rugby codes. The former Randwick player had taken Argentina to the semi-finals of the last World Cup and then steered a struggling Leicester team to a premiership final in his one season there.

Cheika revealed Waugh’s pitch on the Waratahs ultimately proved successful and said he was eager to steer them back to the finals for the first time since 2023.

“I had to decide in my own head that I could do what was necessary to make the team go well. It’s not about me, it’s about the team,” Cheika said.

“So teams need a certain type of coach at a certain time, and that fluctuates. You may not be the right guy for that team at that time, and I had to feel like I would be the right guy for this team at this time.

“And then I answered in my own head, ‘OK, this is what I think would need to get done. Can I do that? Can I, in the timeframes that I’ve got and all of that type of thing?’ And I answered to myself, ‘yes,’ obviously ...

“So I didn’t really need to be persuaded. I had to answer my own questions about, can I get the team to where we want it to be?”

Another familiar face for Cheika from the Roosters is NRL star Angus Crichton, who is recovering from a foot injury and has been travelling in Europe. It is expected that Crichton will primarily play for the Waratahs at inside centre, allowing Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii to gain more experience as a winger.

Cheika has enjoyed success with former NRL players including Israel Folau and is confident Crichton can make an impact with the Waratahs, but is putting no pressure on him.

“I’m not a real big expectations man, you know, I think that because they usually only lead to regrets,” Cheika said.

“For Angus, he’ll have his own personal ideas and goals of what he wants to achieve, and then he’ll be part of the team’s goals as well. I didn’t talk to him at all about it while we were at Roosters together ...

“Angus has been playing league for a long time now, but he played rugby for a while, and I’ve got no doubts in what he’ll bring and how he’ll fit into the team, and what he’ll bring to the team off the field as well.”

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