Quade Cooper (left) steps out at Queensland Reds training at Ballymore this week. Picture: Peter Wallis Source: The Courier-Mail
"THE Waratahs are the new Reds," shouted the headline on a rugby website. Conceivably it could even be true. After all, England became the new Wallabies and the Wallabies became the old England last year so maybe there is more of this rugby transmogrification thing going on than anyone realised.
Still, a word of caution. Maybe the Reds aren't finished being themselves just yet. To listen to Ewen McKenzie, his players certainly aren't ready to shed their jerseys yet, and most definitely not to exchange them for cast-off sky blue shirts.
In fact, remaining true to themselves seems to be the Reds' theme for this year. The franchise allowed Quade Cooper to design the T-shirts included in every Reds member's package and the cryptic, Twitter-friendly message he came up with was "UbYOU". While Cooper himself might be going through an identity crisis these days, not quite sure whether he's a boxer or a rugby player, it would appear the Reds have a pretty fixed idea about who they are and where they are heading.
That said, things desperately do need to change at the Waratahs. Under Michael Foley, NSW looked and played dreadfully. Foley is far too skilled and thoughtful a coach to warrant all the blame dumped on him. Far from it. Clearly he was working in an unstable, poisonous environment in which everyone was too busy saving their own skins to help him out and, under the circumstances, he became more and more conservative in his thinking. Best for him and the Waratahs that he moved on to Perth where the organisation behind him is far more supportive.
Michael Cheika's appointment as the new Tahs coach looks to be a masterstroke. He's positive, purposeful, seemingly knows what he wants even if he does leave his choice of captain to the last second and, best of all, he is wooing back those sadly disillusioned NSW supporters who each year search forlornly for reasons to believe again. This year, thanks to Cheika, they have found some. Granted, having Israel Folau and Michael Hooper drop into his lap has hurt Cheika's prospects not at all. Suddenly, the most exciting back and forward in Australian rugby are at his command and sensibly he has given them every encouragement to express themselves.
Inevitably, fans and media have latched on to these two shiny, bright stars and enthused over all the changes they are going to bring. But the reality is that if this year is going to be any different for Tahs supporters it will be because the same old players from last year are able to bring an entirely new mindset to their work.
That's what makes it curious that Cheika has taken the attitude that wins in pre-season trials don't matter, with the Tahs beating the Rebels 26-14 but losing 36-40 to the Blues and 14-16 to the Crusaders because they spurned potentially match-winning shots at penalty goal.
Cheika argues that when Leinster won the Heineken Cup under him in 2007-08, it lost all three pre-season trial matches. Yet Leinster was coming off a relatively successful cup campaign in 2006-07 in which it won its pool before losing to Wasps in the quarter-finals. The Waratahs, by contrast, were lamentable last year, winning only four of their 16 matches - the same number as the Melbourne Rebels, who significantly aren't attracting anywhere near the same amount of hype, despite picking up a pretty handy breakaway of their own in Scott Higginbotham.
So what the survivors of last year's Waratahs desperately need - so too Folau, who enjoyed only two victories with Greater Western Sydney - is to experience winning again. As the great Vince Lombardi once put it, "winning is not a sometime thing, it's an all the time thing ... winning is a habit". It's a habit the Waratahs have fallen out of. It's like muscle memory in golf. Get good memories ingrained and they'll take over when the pressure is at its most intense. Of course, when the only memories you have to draw upon are bad ones ...
It could be, of course, that Cheika cannily is ensuring that expectations don't run away with themselves. Good luck to him in that event because one of the great constants of Australian rugby is that, come February, it's always shaping up as the year of the Waratah as far as NSW fans are concerned.
It's hard to say precisely whether the dream exceeds reality or whether reality hasn't lived up to potential but the other great constant is that, come May, the Tahs are always being pilloried from pillar to post.
Better to keep the expectations low now in the hope of pleasantly surprising fans as the season unfolds.
Hopefully this change of tactic works. New Zealand still might have won the Super Rugby title when the team representing its biggest city, Auckland, was in the blues and South Africa didn't miss a beat when the team from Johannesburg, the Lions, barely managed a meow, but Australian rugby can't afford for its biggest market, Sydney, to disconnect.
Happily, indications are that Canberra fans are beginning to plug into the Brumbies again. For a long while they went missing. Not that they left Canberra Stadium. They simply swapped horses midstream and started cheering for the Raiders instead - until the Raiders also went cold. But now the signs are that the worrying "pox on both houses" has lifted and Canberra fans are preparing to play their old game again of backing whichever side, rugby or NRL, gives them the most bang for their buck.
Brumbies coach Jake White has been saying all the right things and, better yet, a few wrong things, to help drum up interest, starting with tonight's opening clash with the Reds. But it's how the Brumbies express themselves on the field that will determine how big a rugby revival the ACT enjoys. David Pocock and Clyde Rathbone are the headline acts, along with the exciting 10-12 combo of Matt Toomua and Christian Lealiifano, but, again, it will be the foot soldiers, the Stephen Moores and Jesse Moggs, the Peter Kimlins and Scott Fardys, who will determine whether the Brumbies march on from their near-miss 2012.
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