Wallabies coach Michael Cheika says this week’s quarter-final lead-in isn’t about he and his England counterpart Eddie Jones and in face he is keen to avoid it becoming about England at all.
The past six Australia-England encounters have often been marked by some cheeky words back and forth between the former Randwick teammates and Cheika seemed to spark that up again after his side’s win against Georgia.
Cheika said post-match that England had “better win” their quarter-final after Jones suggested the typhoon gods smiled at them when his team’s final pool match against France was cancelled.
On Monday morning in the Wallabies’ base of Odawara, Cheika played down the significance of the pair’s relationship, saying he was fully focused on his own team’s happenings this week.
“No, like obviously (the media manager) tells me if he said I was too old or too slow or something like that, you know what I mean,” he said.
“But no, not really. Our thing is on our heads you know, we are not looking anywhere else, just inside our own team.
“These are weeks where that’s where you want to be, inside your team and totally involved inside that.
“Because they are the memories you have of footy, these big match weeks, knockout footy, all that type of stuff.”
Cheika said he was indifferent to the fascination about the relationship between him and Jones as well.
“It’s neither (fun nor tedious),” he said.
“My focus is on the game. I’ll do whatever I think is necessary to make sure our blokes are in the best position to win, that’s it.
“The other stuff doesn’t even read on my radar, to be honest.”
In fact, Cheika was quick to say he wasn’t even taking too much interest in England as a team this week, more concentrated on what his own charges were doing.
Cheika is open about the fact that he watches very little opposition tape, tending to leave that to his assistant coaches and that won’t be changing for the quarter-final.
“(We’ve got) lots of respect (for them) but I’m not a big analyser of the opposition,” he said.
“I’m always telling my coaches not to watch the opposition so much.
“They watch too much footage of the opposition. I’m interested in our blokes, our team and our analysis so that it can help us be better.”
As for that six-match losing streak against their rivals, Cheika dismissed talk of that immediately.
"I think it's irrelevant really. You'd only have to, me going, there is reasons, (behind those losses), not trying to avoid but why go back and talk about all those games?," he said.
"I talked about those games in those press conferences after those games and then they’re done with and we’re onto the next thing. Looking backwards is only going to give you a sore neck.
"We’ve got opportunities this week and we’ve got to take them."
The Wallabies finished second in their pool, losing just one game to Wales along the way, setting up the final eight clash with England in Oita.
Cheika said they would have some extra tactics to draw on against England in the knockout match but the key was ensuring they pulled them off.
“Definitely we’d have a set of tactics we want to use, yeah. No doubt about it,” he said.
Nothing that’s crazy different to what we’ve done but highlight a few areas in the principles in our game and a game that we’d really like to focus on in this one because of the way we feel we can get ascendancy.
“So yeah we’d have a few tactics. Are they special ones? You’ve just got to make sure that you do them.
“ There’s no thinking ‘oh this is great,’ everything’s great on paper. Let’s do them and be precise about what we do.”
If the Wallabies fall short this weekend, Saturday’s match could conceivably be Cheika’s final match in charge of the team but he wouldn’t be drawn on his coaching future
“You mean this afternoon? No mate, I know you don’t know me very well but I’m only thinking about today,” he said.
“I’m genuine. Actually you’d get on pretty well with my Mrs, she’s always asking what’s going on tomorrow or next week or the week after and I never tell her because I want to enjoy today.
“I’ll back myself to do whatever and I don’t really care about later on; this has all been just one day after the other and trying to do your best in that next day. “
Australia take on England in a Rugby World Cup quarter-final in Oita on Saturday October 19, kicking off at 4:15pm local, 6:15pm AEDT, LIVE on Foxtel, Network Ten and via RUGBY.com.au RADIO, Rugby Xplorer and Amazon Alexa.
