Cheika fashions Wallaby side with World Cup style

Michael Cheika made a fortune in fashion but dresses unfashionably and is acclaimed as one of world's best rugby coaches when he was just a decent workhorse player.

The 48-year-old handler of a team many people now consider serious challengers for the World Cup may look like a well-cuddled teddy bear with the trademark cauliflower ears of a scrummager, but he has the ability to bite back.

His colourful outbursts are however balanced by thoughtful insights, about rugby and life. And as a speaker of Arabic, French, Italian and English, he puts many of his more moneyed and university-educated rugby counterparts to shame.

Cheika had a modest upbringing, the son of Lebanese immigrants who arrived in Australia with just AUS $20 in 1950 and settled in the unfashionable Sydney district of Coogee.

He has not forgotten those roots and spoke of how he wished the Wallaby team who will take on England Saturday could be a mix of people just as he has seen in Lebanon.

"I think the Lebanon is one of the few places in the world where I've been able to see such a mix of cultures," he said in a 2006 interview with The Irish Times when he was coach of Irish side Leinster.

Lebanon has been messed up "by everybody else playing world games there," he added.

Cheika, who is married with four children, has used that example of a mix of different characters to build an Australian side that is one of the most improved since he took over less than a year ago.

"I like the teams where you've got the lover, the fighter, the joker, that whole combination of characters, the quiet guy, the bookworm," he told Inside Sport earlier this year.

"That's what makes good teams, and people are interested in their team-mates' differences, that's how you build camaraderie."

- Cheika's rules -

This non-conformist attitude carried over into how he treated heavy drinking and ill discipline by Australian stars prior to his arrival last year.

He says he did not wield the stick but treated them as adults.    

"We are not going to win anything with school kids," he said.

"I trust them. They know that respect is given to them and they got to pay that back.

"I need set rules in place, because there is a code around respect and if someone crosses that line of respect they’ll be out. They know that."

Respect is something he earned playing in France and Italy and then ultimately as a coach for Irish province Leinster -- to whom he delivered their first European Cup after years of playing second best to bitter domestic rivals Munster.

He also managed Stade Francais in France before winning a Super Rugby title on his return to Australia with the Waratahs. That secured him a niche in the history as the only coach to win both the northern and southern hemispheres most prestigious club trophies.

Cheika made a fortune with his own clothes company. Whilst some among the blazered brigade that still frequent rugby grounds might raise their eyebrows at his spending time in the fashion industry he says there are crossovers.

"Oh, definitely around people management and managing your ... people who work for you and with you to try to maximise their potential," he told ABC radio last year.

"It's something I've learnt more and more as I've gone on in coaching and business and coaching has been that people drive everything.

"And the best that you can get out of each person at their own level, the more you're going to get.

"The more they're going to enjoy it as well and hopefully you're going to get the right results at the end."

According to Australian scrum-half Nick Phipps, the coach may not have learned a lot about dress sense from his fashion contacts.

"It's no surprise to me he was killing it in fashion," Phipps told Inside Sport.

"Although to be honest, you should see his kit when he walks around; he's not a fashionable guy -– but he was able to do that because he knows people so well and knows what success is."

Cheika too is unabashed about his reputation for his straight-talking.

"If telling the truth is intimidating, then I am intimidating. Truth is important.

"I am not doing my job if I am not being honest with my team." he said before the World Cup.
Source: AFP