Composed Cheika keen to bow out on a high

INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL CHEIKA: Gerry Thornleytalks to Leinster's coach who, in his final season with the province, wants to see his charges perform like European champions

IT’S A source of considerable pride for Michael Cheika that the Irish team which finished the win against South Africa contained four recent products of the Leinster academy – Rob Kearney, Jamie Heaslip, Sean O’Brien and Cian Healy. Slowly, but relatively seamlessly, the Leinster squad has undergone quite a change in Cheika’s five years at the helm.

Indeed, he notes that there are only eight players from the squad he inherited still playing for the province – Girvan Dempsey, Gordon D’Arcy, Bernard Jackman, Brian O’Driscoll, Shane Horgan, Ronnie McCormack, Malcolm O’Kelly and Jamie Heaslip – while Rob Kearney came into the team halfway through that 2005-06 campaign.

It’s also instructive to note how different Leinster are even a few months on from their Heineken Cup triumph. While injuries are a contributory factor, there are still ten changes to the starting line-up which played against Castres on the corresponding weekend last season, with the likes of Denis Fogarty, Nathan Hines, Kevin McLoughlin and Eoin Reddan all arriving or breaking into the team.

“It has been a really interesting year of evolution and it’s not been really by design. What we’ve tried to do is just put the competition there and see who’s going to win this competition.”

Cheika says he’s content with where the team is at, pointing out that their itinerary for the first phase of the season leaves them with only two more trips outside Ireland, plus the London Irish game in round six, for the rest of the season. This is their seventh away game of the campaign, whereas they’ve only played four at the RDS.

Perhaps the changes have helped to guard against so-called second season syndrome.

“I was unbelievably paranoid about that at the start of the season and I think maybe in the first section I put a little bit too much pressure on them. I haven’t really seen it in any of their performances. I’ve never seen that thing like ‘ah we’re there, we’ve done it all’. You don’t see it in any aspect of their approach and maybe I was so hyper about it at the start of the year to make sure that it didn’t happen because that’s everything that I’m against. I believe in just doing it and it’s so important to us if we really want to establish that winning culture.”

That only one of the previous 14 Heineken Cup winners has retained the trophy, Leicester in 2001/02, is, he feels, more down to the quality of the tournament than second season syndrome.

“It’s a different tournament now. Like, it’s so difficult. Because of the cut-throat nature of it there’s not many second chances and we, I mean both Leinster and Munster, suffered at the start of the season because we didn’t have our players before the first rounds to get that real flow happening.”

As ever though, December/January is the crunch time of the season, all the more so after the defeat at home to London Irish.

“There’s less wriggle room alright, no doubt about it. I think from our point of view, like I said it’s very clichéd, but this is the only game that counts. The leaders at their home ground. You win the game there’s a good chance you’re going to take the lead, unless Irish get a bonus point win in Brive, which they might, but you’re gonna be there or thereabouts.”

Following on from last season’s triumph, to emulate Ulster (2000-01), Northampton the following year and Wasps (in ’04-05 and ’07-08) in not making it out of the pool stages would be a terrible let-down.

“We have this propensity to always have to go through this every year. I don’t know if it’s conscious or not but the way our planning is, or maybe just the way our season plans work out, but every year we seem to struggle a little bit in those pool stages. I think we’re getting better at it. I think the London Irish game probably wasn’t a disaster. We just didn’t play great. Things didn’t go that well and we just gave away a dumb penalty at the end and we got caught. It’s nothing comparable to say the clanger that we dropped last year in France (away to Castres) when we lost that game in the middle.”

They say a team mirrors its coach, and it’s striking to note how much both coach and players have calmed down over the last few years. He reasons that, at the start, he wanted to show his team that he cared. Perhaps it’s also due to the sense of achievement in winning trophies, and also the departure of one or two firebrands on both the coaching and playing staff. In any event, Cheika and Leinster appear more composed these days.

His own stated intention to leave might also be perceived as a distraction, but Cheika believes the opposite is true, and he’s still working on new recruits and other off-the-field planning.

“I’ve made it clear to them about why I’m going, what we’re about and what I’d love to see happen when I come back here in two or three years’ time (as a fan) and they know I’m genuine about that.”

He acknowledges that Leinster took a gamble with him and he wants to pay them back. He cites a comment by Jonno Gibbes, ‘you’ve always got to leave something for next year’s team’, and talks about maintaining the team’s year-on-year improvements, in its culture, play, identity and club spirit.

Even so, you wonder was he not inclined to see that process through himself, become to Leinster what Guy Noves is to Toulouse.

“He’s from Toulouse number one,” says Cheika. “It’s his home. He played there. But I think that if he was just starting out now maybe 14 years wouldn’t be a viable thing. It’s sort of slightly different now from those first years and also I’m just a big believer in the fact that there’s got to be a real transparency in everything that happens. If I show any doubt or any hesitation, that will flow through the team and I want to be certain about all the decisions that we’re making all the time.”

He also believes that after five years it will probably need a new coach with new ideas to take Leinster to another level, and accepts that some players will be happier than others to see him move on. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s disrespectful; I just think that’s normal. I was a player too. If I had to listen to me every day for five years I’d be upset as well sometimes, it’s punishing!” he says with a broad smile.

His name has been linked with the proposed Super 15 franchise in Melbourne, and French clubs may yet sound him out, but there’s been nothing remotely concrete on the table. Leinster are almost unique in planning so far in advance and his own uncertain future doesn’t perturb him.

Whatever the future holds, his bond with Leinster is now deep.

“This is my club. I definitely couldn’t coach another club in the league. I couldn’t coach against Leinster. I know it’s bad, or maybe it’s good, I’m not sure, but I couldn’t do it to my club, you know? That’s how I feel.”

Allied to Leinster’s successful move to the RDS, overall expansion and more than doubling their fan base, the European champions have become notably more professional in his time with them and he likes to think the coaches have forced that to some extent.

“It’s about getting better and better, and being more and more professional, but at the same time keeping your core values.”

Such as?

“I think the core values of Leinster are the desire to play with flair and attack but, when we have to, we’ll dig our heels in and fight. We want to play like that but sometimes we can’t and we’re going to have to just dig in and fight whereas maybe in the past we didn’t have that. Along with that, having extremely high standards to try to achieve that winning culture so that every young player that comes into the team feels the responsibility to carry that on, and that’s important.”

Leinster have rarely scaled the same attacking heights as they did when winning away to Bath and Toulouse in his first year, but this is down to improvements in the general standards of defending – a prime example being Leinster’s.

“But it doesn’t mean it has to stop us from trying and I think we’re still one of the teams that try to attack, we still do a lot off first phase whereas a lot of teams don’t do anything off first phase.

“We’ve also got a new sort of emphasis on how we want our backs to attack over a set of phases now which you’re going to see over this next couple of months and which the guys have bought into since they’ve come back from the November internationals.”

All of which has one goal uppermost in mind. As Cheika’s selection highlighted last week, this season’s Heineken Cup is his priority. For you know that the single biggest legacy he would love to bequeath to Leinster is back-to-back European titles.