Michael Cheika will front the Rugby Australia board on December 10 as rumours swirl of growing disquiet in the Wallabies' dressing room and potential coaching replacements jockey for position.
Fairfax Media understands concerns of a double standard on team discipline led captain Michael Hooper to front Cheika last week about the incident involving Adam Ashley-Cooper and Kurtley Beale in Wales almost 10 days after the fact.
Fairfax Media can reveal Melbourne winger Sefa Naivalu was disciplined in South Africa over a breach of team protocol that saw him miss a bus to a training session. A week later he left the touring party nursing an injury.
Sent home: Sefa Naivalu was sent home from Argentina last month for breaching team protocol. Credit:PA
When Beale and Ashley-Cooper were found to have breached team protocol by having three women in their hotel room after the team's loss to Wales, one of whom was Ashley-Cooper's sister-in-law, some players feared that allowing it to go unpunished would project a double standard to the playing group. They went to senior team figures with their concerns.
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The context of the suspensions, which received mixed reactions from rugby fans and the wider public, came to light as World Cup-winning former Springboks and Brumbies coach Jake White and Scotland director of rugby Scott Johnson emerged as potential replacements for the under-fire Cheika, whose win rate crashed to 48.3 per cent after four years and 58 Tests in charge.
The RA board meets for the final time this year on December 10, which now looms as the obvious date for Cheika's end-of-year review.
Season of horrors: Australia lost their ninth Test at Twickenham on Saturday night. Credit:AP
With public outrage building over the worsening results and inaction from the RA board and executive, chairman Cameron Clyne and chief executive Raelene Castle will have little choice but to offer a change.
Their two most likely options are to sack Cheika and appoint an interim coach until the end of next year's Rugby World Cup, or to clean out his assistants. In that scenario, attack coach Stephen Larkham and defence coach Nathan Grey, both of whom have been with the side on some basis since 2015, are most vulnerable.
Fairfax Media understands White, who is in Japan coaching Toyota Verblitz, is open to coaching the Wallabies but, with one year left on his current contract, would be less interested in an interim role.
Johnson, who has worked with Scotland head coach Vern Cotter to turn the small Test nation into Six Nations and World Cup contenders over the past few years, has been linked to a move back to Australia for some time. He was targeted by RA for a role with Queensland but appears to have been holding out for something bigger.
Whether the RA board have the appetite to sack Cheika remains to be seen, despite the Wallabies' poor record this year that will go down in the history books as Australia's worst since 1958 in a season in which more than 10 Tests were played.
Michael Cheika will front the Rugby Australia board on December 10. Credit:AP
The other option could be to keep the Super Rugby and European Champions Cup winner on until his foreshadowed exit after the World Cup, but inject fresh ideas into the set up.
The Australian system is full of promising younger coaches, such as Rebels head coach Dave Wessels and the Waratahs newest recruit, Chris Whitaker, who returned from France for a job as attack coach with NSW. Whitaker's stablemate, defence coach Simon Cron, is also touted as a future head coach, while the Brumbies' Dan McKellar, new Queensland defence coach Peter Ryan and attack coach Jim McKay are rated highly by Rugby Australia's high performance department.
Cheika was forced to defend the team's unity after Saturday's loss to England, during which man-of-the-match Kyle Sinckler mercilessly sledged the Wallabies, calling them "f—ing snitches". Cheika strongly denied there was a rift.
Available: Former Brumbies and Sprinboks coach Jake White is coaching in Japan's Top League Credit:Jay Cronan
"I dont think there is divide whatsoever, he said. "In fact, I think the opposite. Youve got to say that the team is more important than any of the individuals and thats the way it is.
"They are the decisions we make and if you have seen the way training has been this week, even after that event and then into the game [there has been] effort and commitment from every player. I dont think we are seeing that in any way shape or form. I am sure, 100 per cent, there is nothing like that off the pitch."
Before Saturday's match, Castle backed Cheika's decision to take a hard line on Beale and Ashley-Cooper's misdemeanour and again reiterated her support for the former NSW coach.
"We believe that we've got a head coach who's experienced, that's led a party through a World Cup before and one of his biggest strengths is going into a campaign-type environment where he'll get the boys offshore," she said.
"He'll actually have them consistently for about eight to 10 weeks where they'll be able to build that momentum inside the environment and lead into a World Cup.
"There's no doubt we have got a review to do and we need to look under every cover and make sure we've identified the things that aren't working. Ultimately we're there because we believe that we can be successful at the World Cup."
Georgina Robinson is a Sports Reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald
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