Cheika’s commanding response to question he ‘knew would come up’

The boss is back at the NSW Waratahs, and he wants to set the record straight.

Eleven years after signing off from his home state, Michael Cheika has returned determined to deliver a second Super Rugby title to success-starved fans.

Flanked by his 2014 champions Stephen Hoiles and Wycliff Palu, the world-class coach gave a typically forthright and fascinating first press conference after pressing pause on his NRL ambitions.

Cheika became animated when asked whether the NSW job could be a springboard back to the Wallabies, as it had been more than a decade ago.

“I want to be really clear about this, right, because I knew that’d come up,” Cheika told the press pack at Sydney’s Allianz Stadium.

“There’s no springboards. There’s no ‘I’m going here to get there,’ there’s no ‘I’m coming here to get this team…’

“I’m here to try and win the comp. Like isn’t that what we want to do at the end of the day? That’s it.”

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After the historic 2014 title, Cheika took the 2015 Waratahs to an 11-5 regular season record before getting ambushed by the Highlanders in the semi-finals.

Cheika moved on to the Wallabies fulltime and NSW have since churned through coaches with very little success.

Daryl Gibson, Rob Penney, Darren Coleman and Dan McKellar have all had a crack, along with Jason Gilmore and Chris Whitaker on an interim basis.

All had losing records and the nadir came with a wooden spoon finish in 2024, a decade after Cheika’s crew were guzzling champagne after stunning the Crusaders at Allianz.

Cheika has only signed a one-year contract and senior assistant Hoiles is primed and waiting in the wings when he moves on.

“I’ve always been like this,” the multilingual 59-year-old said, fresh from guiding Lebanon to a wild win over France at the Rugby League World Cup.

“Even when I was a player overseas, like 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. On what could happen in the future, there’s no strategy.

“My young fella, Carlos, said to me, ‘if you don’t do this, I’m going to apply for the job,’ because he saw it advertised on Sportspeople, right?

“And I said to him, ‘well, there’s no way I’m letting you coach the Waratahs, that’s for sure, right?’ So, I really want it to be clear that this is where I am, where my feet are, and that’s it.”

The Waratahs start preseason in Daceyville on Monday and they can expect a torrid time.

They can also expect success.

Cheika will be able to call on the experience of veteran halves Nick Phipps and Bernard Foley but knows he will have to evolve to break the New Zealand stranglehold in the competition.

"It's 10 years later, so there's a different way of what they've had applied to them, how they've been brought up and coached maybe differently, so I want to show them something new and maybe a different way altogether," he said.

"There'll be some things I'm going to do this year that I haven't even done before so I want to do things differently because I want to get a different outcome.

"I think that this is a very new adventure. I'm not going back to the 2014 or '15 playbook and trying to reinvent that at all. From a point of view of who the club is, I can definitely look back to that. We had a very strong identity back then and then as far as footy's concerned, I want to create a completely new picture."

Cheika didn’t go chasing the Waratahs job after NSW parted ways with previous coach Dan McKellar.

But with the Waratahs now owned by Rugby Australia, Phil Waugh’s front-foot approach paid off.

“I wouldn’t be the type of person who was going to be persuaded,” Cheika said.

“I haven’t really had contact with many people, if anyone, from Australia in rugby since the World Cup in ’19, and I thought that when Phil contacted me, he handled that situation very well, very straight up and down, very direct with how that went down, and I appreciated that,” Cheika explained.

"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.

“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 answer in my own head, ‘OK, this is what I think would need to get done, can I do that?’

“I answered to myself yes, obviously, so then it becomes a really exciting opportunity... I didn’t really need to be persuaded. I had to answer my own questions about whether I could get the team to where we want it to be.”

Waratahs squad: Miles Amatosero, Jack Barrett, Angus Bell, Dan Botha, Ethan Dobbins, Eamon Doyle, Folau Fainga’a, Isaac Fonua, George Francis, Clem Halaholo, Isaac Kailea, Sefo Kautai, Edwin Langi, Marshall Le Maitre, Matt Philip, Veikoso Poloniati, Apolosi Ranawai, Luke Reimer, Pete Samu, Angus Scott-Young, Teddy Wilson, Max Burey, Angus Crichton, Bernard Foley, Joey Fowler, Jake Gordon, Angus Grover, Sid Harvey, James Hendren, Max Jorgensen, Henry O’Donnell, Nick Phipps, George Poolman, Harry Potter, Otto Serfontein, Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii

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