Leicester Tigers coach Michael Cheika.Credit: Getty Images
In the coming weeks, Michael Cheika could prove himself – again – as one of the world’s best rugby coaches by delivering Leicester an English Premiership title, after being at the club for less than a year.
Then Cheika will return home to Australia and look at coaching opportunities in rugby league.
It’s not a choice, necessarily. Rugby is Cheika’s bread-and-butter and he has major clubs and nations reaching out on a regular basis. But the way the 57-year-old reads it, the half-doors open for him in the 13-man game back home are probably a better bet than closed doors in the 15-man version.
“Obviously rugby’s out of the question for me in Australia because there have been a few positions come up and I haven’t had … they’re not interested and that’s fine, I understand that,” Cheika says.
“So if I want to stay in Australia, that (rugby league) is pretty much my option. If not, I would have to go back overseas at some stage if I want to keep coaching (in rugby).”
Cheika was not considered for the Waratahs’ head coach vacancy last year, and despite a coffee meeting with Rugby Australia chief executive Phil Waugh in February, he didn’t get an interview to return to the Wallabies, either.
Cheika stresses, emphatically, he is not talking down his good mate Les Kiss, who he is “super pumped” to see get a shot as Wallabies coach.
And, ever the pragmatist, Cheika is not yet even looking seriously at what is coming next.
Michael Cheika is returning from a stint with Leicester.Credit: Getty Images
Counter-intuitively for a guy interested in breaking into the NRL – where people sign future deals years out from the end of a contract – Cheika has a policy of not doing any serious business with a new club until he’s finished up in his current one.
So right now, he’s getting on with the business of finishing his current job, and the business of winning silverware, too.
After taking over Leicester when now-Waratahs coach Dan McKellar departed in June last year, Cheika has lifted the Tigers from third-last in 2023-24 to second on the regular season ladder, and into a home semi-final on Sunday against the Sale Sharks.
The Tigers are now just two wins away from a 12th English premiership title, and victory would also see Cheika claim another piece of coaching history.
Michael Cheika and Michael Hooper celebrate victory over the Crusaders in the Super Rugby decider in 2014.Credit: Getty
Already the only man to coach teams to titles in both Super Rugby (NSW, 2014) and the European Cup (Leinster, 2009), Cheika can become the first coach to ever win the Super Rugby-English Premiership double as well.
It would go in a pool room that also has a Celtic League title, a Shute Shield and a Rugby World Cup runners-up medal.
Tiger Town
Cheika arrived at the famed Welford Road ground at Leicester in late June last year after a rapid 10-day negotiation. The club had just “mutually” parted ways with McKellar, one season into a three-year deal.
Cheika and his family had returned to Australia after being based in Paris while he coached Argentina between 2022 and 2023, but he had not been considered for the Waratahs job after Darren Coleman’s exit, and he’d also missed out on the Parramatta Eels, despite being interviewed.
“I’ll be honest, I didn’t think they (Leicester) would say yes when I just said one year,” Cheika said.
Cheika had built a reputation as a “turnaround” specialist, but he surprised many by immediately talking about the goal for the Tigers in his single season: to win the premiership.
Forget Ange Postecoglou and second-year promises, Cheika said they could jag a trophy in year one.
“If you’re a head coach, and if you are not going there to win it, what’s the point?” Cheika explains.
“That sets the tone then for, okay, what are the standards we want to have?
“Honestly, you never know if you’re going to get there. We still aren’t there, you know? We’ve got a couple of steps to go. But if you go in there with anything less than that mindset, I feel like I am letting the team down before you even start.”
Armed mostly with an inherited roster and coaching staff, Cheika started with the Tigers, and almost immediately his reputation preceded him. After round one, Cheika was suspended for a match by the RFU after a post-game exchange about a contentious HIA call with a match-day doctor, who felt intimidated by Cheika.
A disappointed Cheika said at the time he didn’t feel welcome in the English premiership. Did he feel like he had been prejudged?
“I’m sort of used to it now,” Cheika said. “That’s the way it is, it’s the nature of the beast. There was nothing serious in the end. I was disappointed, being at a new club and everything. But the club backed me unbelievably well.”
The Tigers, with Aussie names like Izzy Perese, Jed Holloway and Ben Volavola and Test stars like Handre Pollard, Freddie Steward, Ollie Chessum and Julian Montoya on the books, steadily improved in the first half of the season, until a horror day in a Champions Cup fixture in late January when a white-hot Toulouse beat them 80-12.
“It was terrible,” Cheika said. “It felt terrible. We weren’t even that bad, we just couldn’t stop them, and they were hot.”
The humbling loss ended up sparking a late-season run of success, however. With no other choice but to learn from the loss, Cheika pulled the trigger and made changes to team structures, and he brought in David Kidwell as a new defence coach.
Michael Cheika at the match against ExeterCredit: Getty Images
“The whole turnaround thing, which has been something I’ve done always pretty much, you know, trying to do that in the year, I released I probably needed to accelerate a few things.”
The Tigers have won eight of twelve games since.
English style
In his first season coaching in England, Cheika has been surprised, and impressed, with the amount of expansive rugby he has encountered. Though once considered a kick-heavy, forward-dominated competition, the average per-game tries in the Premiership now sits just under that of Super Rugby.
“It surprised me,” he said. “There’s some teams over here that are playing some extremely expansive footy. Like to a point where you’ve got to strategise defensively differently in order to cope with it
“There’s a few others that are playing a lot less kicking and a lot of running from everywhere. It’s been an interesting, good challenge for me to have to – I always thought I was the guy who was involved with the teams that are running the most, and I was probably the guy who’s running the team that’s running one of the least.“
Hob-nobbing in Monaco
Cheika and Kidwell found themselves with a close-up view of a high-performing Aussie in action – Oscar Piastri – when, via a coaching mentoring group, they were invited into the McLaren garage during qualifying at the Monaco Grand Prix in May.
“The whole day there, you know, they were so kind to us,” he said. “They’ve got a really interesting set-up. They gave access to so many interesting people for the day. I’m hoping that I’ll get another chance to go in with them again in the near future, because it’s a very different sport to ours, but there’s a lot of crossover in the human management of people and in the key moments, and they have so many key moments in that world. So it was great.”
Homeward bound
Cheika has made no secret of his interest in pursuing a coaching opportunity in the NRL, after working with the Roosters and coaching Lebanon at the Rugby League World Cup in 2022.
He has been linked to the Dragons, Souths and the Eels, and will resume duties with the Cedars later this year. But, mindful of the peril of becoming the guy floated for every NRL job vacancy, Cheika deflects when asked if interested in coaching the new PNG franchise in 2028.
“I’ve got some experience … but I understand totally I am a bit of an outlier,” Cheika said.
“I’m sort of an outsider in both games, a bit, mate.
Michael Cheika took Lebanon to the quarter-finals of the Rugby League World Cup in 2022.Credit: Getty
“I’m going to be pushing for that opportunity, but only in a way that if there’s a club there that thinks they need the skill set I have, and along with the team that can put together, et cetera. That’s how will work out.
”It’s not something where I will go and put my CV in for everything that comes up. It’s got to be if the team wants you, and sees the skill set you have and if that alignment occurs from the top.
“If that happens in league, that would be awesome because to master that challenge, that would be huge.”
Rugby future
With Rugby Australia focused soberly on stability and aligned high performance, the opinionated Cheika appears to be viewed as a square peg. And the still-smouldering second stint of Eddie Jones is also no help, either.
“It’s pretty clear what their opinion is,” Cheika said. “And I am not saying that in a negative way. That’s the management decision, so that’s fine. I have to then assess my options accordingly.”
He believes the meeting with Waugh about the Wallabies job at a Milson Point restaurant was “never a serious thing”, and probably done out of respect for the third party who lined it up.
“It got put in a very public place, and it got out pretty publicly. As soon as that happened, I thought, oh, ok, this isn’t too fair dinkum,” he said.
Cheika said he’ll return home and then figure out his coaching future, be it in league or overseas rugby, where he has options to explore if interested.
“But I’ve got my businesses and stuff which I can get involved in and wait and see what unfolds,” Cheika said. “I’ve got other opportunities [in Europe], but I actually want to go back and see my people and my family.
“I’m really grateful to my wife and kids. They’ve been so good about the whole thing, you know, moving around, supporting different teams.
“So maybe I will go back for a while, and then see what happens. I have no set plans at the moment.”
There are some options on the horizon in Australian rugby, despite Cheika’s view. Simon Cron has a year left on his contract at the Western Force, and Kiss’ promotion means the Reds are now in the market for a head coach for 2027.
But with sky-blue blood, Cheika has an old-school view on the notion of coaching Queensland.
“I can’t coach Queensland,” Cheika says.
“No, seriously, I couldn’t. It would be like me going to coach Munster against Leinster.
“I understand it’s a professional game and all that business. I get it. And I respect the guys at Queensland, I like (QRU chief executive) Dave Hanham a lot. He’s a top fellow and they’re good guys, and a good team. A great team, right?
“But there are just some rivalries … like, why would you disrespect the people from Waratahs that were on that journey back then (in 2013-2015)?
“I couldn’t. I don’t think it’s right. I just don’t think it would be the right thing to do.
“But that’s me. I’m like that.”
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