Michael Cheika needs to be reined in

There is no respect from Cheika for referees, for proper behaviour by himself as a coach, for justified critics of the team, including former Wallabies, or for viewers around the world confronted on television with his foul-mouthed objections to refereeing decisions in the coaching box.

The result of this disregard for proper behaviour by the standard-bearer of the Wallabies project will be, if the ARU does not bring Cheika into line, that the side will become the pariahs of world rugby, a second-rate rugby power and a side that loses the respect of its supporters.

The warning signs are already blazing out like an out-of-control fire.

For the first time since 1969, the Wallabies have lost their first five Tests of the year. They have lost six in a row if the final of the 2015 Rugby World Cup is counted. Within these losses is an unprecedented 3-0 home series to England. Last week the All Blacks defeated the Wallabies at Sydney 42-8. This was the home side’s biggest defeat in Australia.

The crowd at the ANZ Stadium Homebush was 65,300 or so for this Test, a replay of the 2015 Rugby World Cup final. The match should have been a blockbuster, but get this. It was the smallest crowd at ANZ Stadium for a Sydney Bledisloe Cup Test ever!

What are the odds that if the Wallabies continue in the manner they have this year that the crowd for the Sydney Bledisloe Cup Test in 2017 will be significantly smaller than 65,000?

At Wellington on Saturday night, on a slippery ground and with intense cold making skilful play difficult, the Wallabies were outplayed, out-skilled, out-coached and in every aspect of the game. From making try-scoring plays to dealing with refereeing decisions, they were totally out-classed by the All Blacks 29-9.

The All Blacks scored four tries to none. At Sydney, their victory in boxing terms was a sort of knock-out in the second round. At Wellington, the knock-out came in about the eighth round.

In the television commentary boxes, the experts, all of them former Wallabies, praised the intensity that the Wallabies brought to the Test. Nathan Sharpe, on Channel Ten, for instance, said after the idiotic shoulder charge on Ben Smith by Adam Coleman that he liked the attitude this incident represented.

Once again, foul play was confused by the experts for aggressive play.

None of the experts pointed out that Coleman seemed to be determined to take out Smith, the way Sekope Kepu was under instructions in the 2015 Rugby World Cup final to take out Dan Carter.

And none of the experts pointed to the rugby bankruptcy in these thugby tactics.

The real issue which was never dealt with by all of the television experts is that the Wallabies once again went into a Test against the All Blacks with no discernible plan to win the game.

There was no discernible method, either, in the selection of the Wallabies. The side seemed to be selected by a method of throwing up the players names written on a piece of paper and selecting the backs and forwards on the pieces of paper picked up.

If this seems to be a trifle harsh, consider this: there were four players in the 23 man squad who play 13 in Super Rugby (Kerevi, Folau, Kuridrani, Hodge). There was no player who played 12. The number 12, Bernard Foley, has played his career as a number 10.

There were two number 7s and no number 8. There was no out and out lineout jumper with Rob Simmons being dropped from the squad completely. Adam Coleman (3) and Kane Douglas (1) between them won four lineouts, only. The reserve Dean Mumm actually won four himself.

All Blacks number 8 Kieran Read won 10 lineouts, including several of the four lost Wallabies throws.

Nathan Grey said that fixing up the problems of the Wallabies defence at Sydney would be “easy.” Well, perhaps not. 40 tackles were missed at Sydney. 30 tackles were missed at Wellington. The problem was hardly fixed.

The captain Stephen Moore is clearly finished as a Test player. His scrummaging is weak and only some early indulgence from referee Romain Poite kept the Wallabies scrum in the game. His lineout throwing is a lottery, for the Wallabies instead of being a sure thing as it is for the All Blacks.

And in general play, the All Blacks kept picking on him and other slow coaches, to run around and through to set up their tries.

Most of all, though, Moore has lost the respect of referees around the world, including Australian referees, because of his surly, bovver-boy, insolent attitude and verballing of them last year and this year.

He has shown no respect for referees. And the referees, including Poite on Saturday night, are responding by shutting their ears to his entreaties, as the lesser of two evils.

During the first half of the Test at Wellington, for instance, Poite told Moore about four times, “No more, Stephen… Let’s go, let’s go” after Moore kept on coming up to him and complaining about decisions that were made.

Ten minutes into the Test when Moore called for a yellow card after an All Blacks infringement inside their 22, the first time the Wallabies had been this close to the All Blacks try line, an exasperated Poite told the Wallabies captain: “If I need to talk to you I’m talking to you.”

Again, about 15 minutes later when David Pocock was penalised and Moore walked up to Poite talking with intent, the referee pleaded with him: “Stephen, please go away!”

A few minutes later came the “let’s go, let’s go” instruction.

Then Moore is told after he tries to intervene again: “Move away! Move away.”

All these times, Kieran Read is not to be seen.

Overlooked in the television commentaries also was any analysis of the careful coaching Steve Hansen and his staff have brought to their team.

The All Blacks clearly planned for some aggro from the Wallabies at Wellington. They read Cheika as if he were a pulp fiction novel. So the All Blacks brought in the driving maul, for the first time in years, to keep the Wallabies from skirmishing and smacking into single targets.

The Wallabies seemed to be totally unprepared for this tactic.

There was, too, double-teamed tackling from the All Blacks when the target was available to be smashed. This seemed to discourage much Wallabies running.

Admittedly, the All Blacks had most of the possession (55 per cent to 45 per cent) but they made the most of it running for 411m to the 187m by the Wallabies (nearly half of this involved two superb runs, one by Will Genia and the other by Israel Folau).

Talking about Genia, he played well. But he is the only one of the French veterans who justified the cost of bringing them to Australia. Adam Ashley-Cooper did not survive a first half missed tackle on Dane Coles. Matt Giteau is already back in France following his 12-minute cameo at Sydney.

Drew Mitchell is yet to play a Test. Or even get a run on the reserves bench.

The New Zealand reaction to the performance of the Wallabies can be summed up in the opening sentences of Gregor Paul’s match review for The New Zealand Herald: “Lock up the cabinet and throw away the key. The Bledisloe Cup is staying in New Zealand and, at this rate, maybe it will never again know the feeling of having its base resting snugly on Australian soil again.”

Now this is disturbing. We had Richie McCaw suggesting before the Test that he hoped the Wallabies could make a game of it. Now we have one of the best New Zealand rugby writers suggesting that the decline of the Wallabies is terminal.

And, in my opinion, there is something in this, as long as Cheika is the Wallabies coach.

The point is that he isn’t a coach. He is, at best, a motivator. And the problem with motivators as coaches (remember the gimmick of giving the Waratahs a gold club before the 2014 Super Rugby final) is that gimmicks lose their power after a couple of uses.

Motivator coaches, too, see everything through themselves, rather than the team. This sublimates into the belief that the way their team plays is entirely a matter of how they (the coach/motivator) responds rather than how the team responds.

So during the Test we saw a performance from Michael Cheika in the coaches box that was theatre of the absurd, at its most absurd.

Time after time, when decisions went against his side, there were the histrionics of eye rolling, falling back in bewilderment, hand raising in exasperation and what seemed to be calls of “f******g bullshit!” when decisions went against the Wallabies.

What sort of signal does this send to the players on the field, and the captain?

Is it any wonder the captain Moore has a truculence in his attitude to the referee?

I would point out, though, that David Pocock made a point of thanking referee Poite after the game in the time-honoured manner that befits a Wallaby and a passionate believer in the respectful culture of the game.

Cheika doubled-down on his coaches box histrionics by taking Stephen Larkham and himself out on the sidelines just before half-time.

I saw this and tried to work out why the two coaches were where they were. I have never seen coaches on the sidelines during a Test.

Larkham stood there with a death-stare on his face. Was he trying to intimidate someone? The referee and his assistants, perhaps? Could this be what the ploy was all about?

Whatever, Larkham has form of his own with referee-bashing after his appalling criticism of the excellent Australian referee Angus Gardner after the Brumbies lost their 2016 Super Rugby quarter-final at Canberra to the Highlanders.

And it needs to be remembered that Larkham is Moore’s Super Rugby coach.

Now we come to one of the most shameful media conferences a Wallabies coach has been involved with.

Let us be very blunt. The cornerstone of the integrity of the rugby game is the law that states that the referee is the final judge of fact in any rugby game.

Without players and coaches honouring this law, a ferocious body contact sport like rugby, which has complex laws and literally thousands of outcomes on any given play, will degenerate into a form of cage wrestling.

The laws of the game and the acceptance by officials and players that the referee is always right are the civilising factors for a game that could, in different circumstances, turn into a blood sport.

The players and the coaches have a responsibility to the game and to their fellow players and coaches to respect these civilising factors. This means that they respect the referee and, even if they disagree with his ruling/rulings.

Remember here that I am talking about players, coaches and officials. Spectators (and reporters) have a right to boo or shout for whoever they like, as they do in all the other sports.

Australian rugby, since 1864 when the first rugby game was played here at Sydney University, has been a leading light, by and large, in espousing and playing to the greatest traditions of the great game.

Michael Cheika’s media conference on Saturday night went some way to trash all that history. It has generated a massive disservice to the game, especially in Australia.

Cheika opened up by stating that he was “bitterly disappointed” at the performance of referee Romain Poite following the 29-9 loss to the All Blacks by his Wallabies. He went on to describe as “blatant” Poite treatment of the Wallabies captain, Stephen Moore:

"Well, I was bitterly disappointed, to be honest. I’m on record with the referees boss Alain Rolland about the treatment to our captain and our players. There was a time there in the game where in a break of play, when the national captain of Australia was asking the referee when might be an opportunity for me to talk to you, and he absolutely ignored him.

“He has the whistle, I understand, but there’s a place where the captain has an opportunity to speak to the referee and the referee might not like the captain personally, that might be his prerogative, but he has to afford him that opportunity if he’s affording it to his opponent.”

To me, this is an accusation of a referee going out of his way to favour one side against another. A coach of a side like the Wallabies should never publicly make such an accusation, while coaching the side.

Then Cheika accused Poite of endangering David Pocock’s health late in the match:

“The attitude showed right through when David Pocock was being called off by the other referee for a HIA test, the ref wouldn’t stop the game… I don’t know if it’s subconscious or not but it’s and it’s got to be dealt with because that can’t be going on.”

The problem with this accusation by Cheika is that the Wallabies themselves tried to play on quickly while Pocock was lying injured some 20m or so away from the lineout. Poite called back the quick lineout and instructed the Wallabies to take it from the proper place.

And there was the accusation that Steve Hansen had an unauthorised meeting with Poite in the week of the Test, with Cheika not being informed about the meeting as the World Rugby rules insist should happen.

Again, in my opinion, this indicates that Cheika was doubling down on his accusation.

The implication in the accusation, again, is that Hansen was being favoured by Poite against the interests of Cheika and his Wallabies.

Then Cheika tripled down on his theory against the Wallabies by claiming that the Welsh referee Nigel Owens took a similar stance going into Tests involving the Wallabies.

These public accusations are particularly serious given Cheika’s history of harassing referees.

In Europe he was fined for unacceptable behaviour in regard to referees a couple of times.

He is on a SANZAAR warning that a repeat of his discussion with South African Jaco Peyper last year in the Waratahs-Blues match would have him reprimanded.

Peyper was the assistant referee at Wellington, as it happened, who picked up on the Dane Coles incident which saw a penalty to the All Blacks overturned in favour of the Wallabies.

What Cheika did at the media conference at Wellington on Saturday night was, my opinion, another example of public harassment of the leading referees in world rugby by him, referees who could easily be appointed to referee future Tests with the Wallabies.

If Cheika has complaints about bias against the Wallabies there are appropriate and non-public ways of doing this.

He should prepare a case, based on facts rather than ranting, and present it officially to the referees boss Rolland. This presentation should be, indeed must be, made in private because of the serious nature of the complaints and the legal implications of getting complaints wrong in public.

There are natural justice concerns, too, to be recognised in complaints like this, as well as defamatory implications to be considered.

If Hansen is right, for instance, about not having a secret meeting with Poite, but merely saying hello to him in their hotel, Cheika has made a serious mistake of fact. This possible mistake of fact opens Cheika up to the possibility of defamation charges. It is as serious as this.

The official complaint about the performance of a referee and/or his assistants is what was done in the past by the ARU in the days when it had a sense of the proper processes.

Under David Nucifora’s control of the ARU’s High Performance Unit, for instance, detailed reports on each Test played by the Wallabies were prepared and then passed on to the authorities for attention and action, if necessary.

This system was effective in getting outcomes welcomed by the ARU, and fair to the referees.