Paul Rees finds out what drives new Tigers head coach Michael Cheika and what he plans to do at Welford Road
Despite their chequered past when it comes to overseas coaches, Leicester have turned to Michael Cheika after the unexpected departure of his fellow Australian Dan McKellar last month.
Leicester finished eighth in the table in McKellar’s first, and only, year in charge after taking over as head coach from Steve Borthwick. They reached the last 16 of the Champions Cup and lost to Gloucester at Kingsholm in the Premiership Cup final.
Leicester’s league campaign started with four defeats in their first five matches, but once they had players such as Handre Pollard, Jasper Wiese, Freddie Steward, Ollie Chessum and Dan Cole back at the club after the World Cup, they won six out of seven to put them in contention for a top four finish.
Then came the break for the Six Nations, and after the resumption of the Premiership they again lost four in five matches – the one victory came at Newcastle when they were hanging on in the last 10 minutes – and were condemned to finish among the also-rans.
It was a return to the nether reaches for Leicester who before the arrival of Borthwick in the summer of 2020 had finished 11th in the table in two consecutive campaigns. They won the Premiership in his first campaign in charge having topped the table and were third last season after Richard Wigglesworth took over as interim head coach after Borthwick replaced Eddie Jones as England’s head coach, losing at Sale in the play-off semi-final.
The Tigers were outliers in the league in that they relied on a kicking game. It served them at times, most notably at Harlequins, but it cost them in terms of try bonus points and in a congested table, it told. Only two clubs won more turnovers than Leicester, but they lacked the counter-attacking approach of most of their rivals.
McKellar, who has now joined NSW Waratahs, had made attack his priority for next season, adding the former London Irish full-back Peter Hewat to the coaching team and signing the Australia centre Izaia Perese, who was first called into the Wallabies’ squad by Cheika in 2017.
Leicester will be more ambitious under Cheika, who guided Argentina to the World Cup semi-finals last year having taken over when the Pumas were in disarray. The Wallabies were also a shambles when he became head coach in 2014, but little more than a year later they were playing New Zealand in the World Cup final.
He also enjoyed success at clubs level, winning the Champions Cup with Leinster in 2009 – Leicester were their opponents in the final at Murrayfield – and two years later he was at Stade Francais when they made it to the Challenge Cup final, losing to Harlequins after some refereeing decisions that prompted Cheika to say what he thought and earn a misconduct charge that resulted in a fine.
Mike Brown was the full-back for Quins that evening in Cardiff and he is in the Leicester squad that Cheika inherits. Wiese has left, but Leicester at full strength will still have a team to compete with any in the Premiership.
“Everybody can see that it is a top quality roster the club has,” said Cheika on Leicester’s website. “I am not going to lie and say I know every single one of them down to their bones but that’s what I will do over the next few months, to learn how to get the best out of them.
“The roster is only paper. It’s about how the team gels, how to put these really good players and characters together and get them playing in a way that they love it and a way they love going out there together and representing Leicester Tigers.”
Surprise exit: Dan McKellar
Cheika, like Eddie Jones, was a product of the Randwick club in Sydney. The focus there has always been on attack, a few steps away from the traditional strength of Leicester who in their heyday in the first 15 years of this century took the battle to their opponents up front.
“I have always felt that you have to be true to your identity and honest to who you are as a team,” said Cheika. “By nature, I have an attacking mentality, but there are many ways to attack. There is attack with the ball, attack without the ball, attack in the set-pieces. It’s very much a front foot mentality I have towards the game. It’s about getting your game on and letting the opposition deal with you. Of course, you have to cater for the opposition but it’s about being the best you can be with what you have got. “You have to look at the resources available to you within different squads and where the strengths are, the type of players in the group, but – at the end of the day – it’s about getting on the front foot, being attacking minded has always been the way I want my teams to play.”
Cheika started work on Monday, the first day of pre-season, having been out of work since his contract with Argentina finished at the conclusion of the World Cup. He had been sounded out by Leicester when they were searching for Borthwick’s replacement and his immediate availability meant there was no break in preparations.
“The programme that the players start on day one will have a strong input from me and include the basic principles that I believe are important in pre-season,” said Cheika.
“The standard in the Premiership is ever increasing. You could see last season how close the battle was and the quality of the rugby is getting better and better.
“It’s important for me to be there as soon as possible, to set that agenda on how we are going to operate, how we are going to play rugby It won’t all be laid out on day one but there is an opportunity for those important things to be explained from the beginning and to make sure players, coaches and staff understand why we are doing the things we are doing I want everything explained.
“I want the players and people engaged, and want them all to know me from the start; the way I coach is about having the strong connection with the people around me and everybody knowing they are valued in exactly the same way.”
Cheika has not come to England for a pay day having been successful outside rugby. Leicester’s high turnover of coaches in recent years has largely been down to their expectation of success: failure, even in relative terms, is not tolerated.
“I want Leicester Tigers to compete on as many fronts as we can,” he said. “It is one step at a time, together, to build the foundations. Everyone wants to win trophies, but there is a difference between wanting to win and doing what is necessary to win. That is what I will be doing.
“English teams have been well represented in the top tier of Europe for a while now and we want to get ourselves up to that place as well now, making sure that we are back to competing for the biggest trophies.
“I wasn’t looking at the Premiership and didn’t have the desire to coach in it until Leicester Tigers came to me. The opportunity to coach here and lead this group of players is what turned my head. It is somewhere that I want to be.”
Ins and outs
A priority for Michael Cheika will be to fill the gap left by Jasper Wiese at No.8. The South African international, who earned his Test call up on the strength of his performances for the Tigers, enjoyed another stand-out campaign.
Despite missing the first four Premiership matches, he made more carries than any other player in the league, was second to Alex Dombrandt in gainline carries, beat more defenders than any other forward and was third in turnovers won.
Leicester only won one Premiership match when Wiese was not playing, at Bath by a point, and the last time Leicester started with another No.8 in the league or Champions Cup was when Kyle Hatherell took the field against Stade Francais in the middle of November.
Leicester have so far announced three senior signings. Nicky Smith arrives from the Ospreys where the loosehead prop developed a reputation for his scrummaging, although he has been overlooked by Wales this year despite the national side’s problems in the tight.
The other two are centres, Australia’s Izaia Perese and the 22-year old Will Wand, who arrives from Coventry. Seven other players have left with Wiese including internationals Guy Porter, Matt Scott and Nic Dolly.
Cheika inherits a strong team with the likes of Freddie Steward, Anthony Watson (when fit), Dan Kelly, Ollie Hassell-Collins, Handre Pollard, Jack van Poortvliet, Julian Montoya, his captain during his two years with Argentina, Dan Cole, Ollie Chessum, George Martin, Hanro Liebenberg and Tommy Reffell on the books.
“I spoke to Julian about how he thought I would fit in,” said Cheika. “I did not want his appraisal on his team-mates but to tell me if he thought I would be right for the job and fit into the identity at Tigers.
“At the end of the day, it is not just about me going to Leicester. It is about being successful and for that to happen, you have got to have a good fit so that we put out the best kind of rugby.
“I want this to be my best coaching yet and the preparation and the way we lead the team, I want it to be at my best level. If I can achieve that, other people will bring their best level and good things will start to happen around us.”
Kick start
Leicester finished eighth in the table last season and it was the position they occupied in many of the attacking statistics from the campaign.
They were eighth in the try chart, one score above Gloucester, as they were in total carries and defenders beaten and only bottom club Newcastle made fewer metres with the ball in hand.
They were seventh in visits to the opposition 22, above Harlequins as well as the bottom two clubs, but only two clubs enjoyed more turnovers, Saracens and Quins.
They were fifth in tackles made and second in kicks out of hand, totalling 600 compared to the 601 of Saracens who played a game more after reaching the play-offs.
“We do not want to be a one-trick pony,” said McKellar with three matches of last season to go. “That is the evolution we are talking about. We want to get the ball into Ollie Haskell-Collins’s hands and Freddie Steward’s and bring Jack van Poortvliet’s running game into it.
“It has been difficult without an attack coach, I am not going to lie about that. Matty Smith has been superb, but it was not a job he thought he would be doing. It has been challenging not having the collective group of coaches I thought I would have and I look forward to having an experienced coaching group around me.
“We have been inconsistent having struggled around injuries and being able to name an unchanged side. We have seen glimpses of our game but not for long enough. We need to tweak a few things but there is definite growth and I will be a better coach for the experience of this season.”
He will not be passing that experience on at Welford Road after his sudden and unexpected departure next month but Cheika will look to evolve Leicester’s attack, as he did with Argentina who, like the Tigers, forged a game based around the forwards and half-backs.
Cheika remains the only coach to have won the Champions Cup and Super Rugby. He is known for his fearlessness – he once asked Wayne Shelford if that was all he had after being knocked over by the New Zealand No.8 – and he will expect that from his players.
England will be the fifth country he has coached in and he was in charge of Lebanon, the country his parents were born in, in the 2022 Rugby League World Cup.
“Travel has been a big part of my life,” he said, “learning about different people and cultures, how to fit in and get the best out of people and myself. I would never change that part of my life and a phone call from Leicester Tigers is one you take.”
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