Cheika's strong hand lifts Leinster to new heights
The Aussie coach's five-year reign will be well remembered, says Brendan Fanning
W hat started for Michael Cheika against the Ospreys in September 2005 will finish against the same opposition in the RDS on Saturday.
Back then he was in charge for his first competitive game for Leinster, a coach with no experience of that level of rugby, compounded by a fuse that was so short that in time he became the talk of the refereeing fraternity.
He leaves next month for Stade Francais with five years of priceless experience in his kitbag. And after another few seasons in Paris, the Aussies will lure him home for one job or another. Before too long we will come across him at a Test venue, where he will be tuned into a Wallaby headset.
There are only three survivors in the Leinster 22 from that day in Swansea -- Rob Kearney started on the wing with Girvan Dempsey at full-back, and Jamie Heaslip was on the bench. It was the earliest days of Heaslip's pro career, and managing this irregular talent has been one of Cheika's achievements in Leinster. Indeed man management became a strength as his tenure developed.
"With me, yeah, he has definitely dealt with me well compared to coaches I have had in the past, even in school," says Heaslip. "He lets me do my thing and that's probably what gets the best out of me. I know when to push and when to ask for things as well."
At the time we hadn't a clue who Michael Cheika was when he was unveiled in summer 2005. Padova had been his only experience of Heineken Cup coaching, and suddenly he had landed a job with an outfit who had made the knockout stages of the competition in two of the previous three seasons and already had a Magners League title in the cabinet.
Alan Gaffney, who moves upstairs now to assist Declan Kidney full-time with Ireland, had a strong hand in Cheika getting the job.
"He's seen that sometimes more is not better," he says of Cheika's development. "Every coach does that I think. If they're open and honest, every coach should evolve. There are things you should pick up every day of the week. It doesn't necessarily have to be how a nine passes the ball, just how you approach things. But I think he is getting more maturity as time goes by and he probably doesn't yell at the referees and touch judges as much as he once did."
Gaffney reckons that it's Cheika's Lebanese blood that drives him into situations that sometimes get out of hand. But without it he would be stuck in neutral. And the older man is on the money when he identifies the 'less is more' aspect of Cheika's progress. The manifestation of this was in the aftermath of Leinster's defeat by Castres in December 2008.
Having emptied them in the first leg in the RDS -- effectively killing off whatever ambition Castres had enjoyed in the first place -- Leinster went to Stade Pierre Antoine for the return fixture and lost a winning lead, and the game. Cheika was a broken man after it. By then, he had strengthened the squad with the likes of Rocky Elsom, Stan Wright and CJ van der Linde, and nights like this were supposed to be in the past.
Senior players feared that his normally long and painful -- for everyone around him -- period of recovery from defeat would drag on interminably.
When he snapped out of it, however, it was with a simplified version of the way Leinster had been trying to play. Typically in that situation the response is to become more detailed and to work longer hours. He resisted the temptation. And moreover he harvested the acres of negative media coverage about the team and used it to steel them as a group. Five months later, they were crowned European champions.
His management of the senior players at times seemed to be excessively lenient. It was regulation Irish-style if you like, but unlike our financial system, in the long run his methods have been proved right. You can't argue with Leinster's consistency in the Magners League over his five seasons where they never finished outside the top three (twice coming first), as well as three semi-finals in the Heineken Cup, winning it last year.
You can question his throughput of Irish players however. The development of Cian Healy and Jonny Sexton was because injuries to non-Ireland-qualified players opened the door. If those injuries hadn't occurred, they may not even be with Leinster now. Of course this will be overlooked in the shower of praise that will wash over him this week, and he will be well remembered regardless of whether or not Leinster add another trophy to his cv on Saturday.
And that will sit well with Brian McLoughlin, who died a year after Cheika was installed. While Alan Gaffney was influential in recommending his fellow Randwick man, McLoughlin, who was chairman of Leinster's professional team committee at the time, was crucial at the interview stage. "He's young and hungry and I think he'll be good for Leinster," he told us at the time. He wasn't far wrong.
Originally published in
