'Expect the unexpected' of Cheika at Tigers

Michael Cheika's first match in charge of Leicester Tigers will be at Exeter Chiefs on Saturday

It has just gone eight o'clock on a Monday morning and Michael Cheika has his players sipping champagne in celebration.

With a European crown and Super Rugby title to his name, and as a coach who took Australia to a rugby World Cup final and little-fancied Argentina to the last four of the tournament last year, the now Leicester Tigers boss could have had the bubbly flowing for any number of reasons.

What sticks with decorated former Australia international Adam Ashley-Cooper is the fact the sound of clinking glasses sometimes replaced a predicted verbal "spray" from Cheika.

"He is unpredictable," said the ex-Wallaby, who was capped 121 times for his country and featured at four World Cups.

"Whether it was taking training to the Australian War Museum, or celebrating certain milestones with the group, when for an 8am team meeting he would come in with a bottle of champagne, hand everyone a glass just before training, and everyone is toasting to someone's engagement or someone having had a baby when you were thinking he is going to come in and spray you for the performance from the weekend.

"The amount of sprays an individual or the team copped was backed up with love and respect. He found a really good balance.

"Expect the unexpected, but expect the best - the best of him."

Cheika's very arrival at Tigers this summer was maybe the biggest surprise of all - having been appointed as Dan McKellar's replacement in a hasty coaching reshuffle on the eve of the club's return to pre-season training in June.

He was welcomed as an "exciting" appointment by Tigers' former England scrum-half Ben Youngs, with the 57-year-old's "winning pedigree" and ceaseless demand for hard work often repeated by those who have just begun working with Cheika at Mattioli Woods Welford Road.

"He has been brilliant," Tigers assistant coach Brett Deacon told BBC Radio Leicester.

"He is obviously world class in terms of what he has done and what he has won in the game. We are just learning a lot from what he brings in terms of his experience and his energy - it's outstanding."

Cheika, whose first match in charge of Leicester will be at Exeter Chiefs on Saturday, is the eighth head coach to lead the Tigers in eight years.

The 11-time Premiership champions, who last won the title in 2022, finished eighth in the league last season - a disastrous campaign that prompted McKellar's departure after less than a year in the East Midlands.

England and Tigers scrum-half Jack van Poortvliet said "a big change in our mentality" was wanted.

"That is something he [Cheika] is really pushing as well," he added.

"Too many times last season we lost the game in the last few minutes and we had leads and lost them.

"That was purely down to our mentality and not being ruthless enough, and I think this year we will have a lot more ruthless side to us, a change in mindset to be more clinical."

Adam Ashley-Cooper played at two of his four rugby union World Cups under Michael Cheika

Transforming teams and their fortunes is something Cheika has made a career of.

He oversaw a cultural shift at Leinster and transformed New South Wales Waratahs at club level, was anointed World Rugby coach of the year after taking Australia to the 2015 World Cup final, and later took Argentina to within one win of the game's biggest showdown.

His exploits with Los Pumas were all the more remarkable as he job shared during part of his tenure, having taken Lebanon to the rugby league World Cup a year earlier.

His move to Tigers and the English Premiership marks a return to club rugby for the first time in almost a decade.

Ashley-Cooper was at Waratahs when Cheika - after a decade in Europe where he he won the Heineken Cup as Leinster boss before working as director of rugby at Stade Francais - returned to Australia to take the helm of the Sydney-based province.

"He came in for the coaching gig and completely turned the place upside down," said Ashley-Cooper, who is among the presenters of rugby podcast 'Kick Offs and Kick Ons'.

"He said, 'Look boys, we are going to do things differently - first and foremost we are going to connect with the community, we are going to play for our state.'

"Because the Waratahs were seen as a bit of an outfit made up of a bunch of Paddington, Sydney, boys who kind of competed from season to season but never got any results.

"He installed this belief through genuine hard work and values we all bought into."

Waratahs had finished 11th in the overall standings the season before Cheika's arrival, and within two seasons he had guided them to their first Super Rugby title in 2014.

Ashley-Cooper scored two tries in their gripping 33-32 victory against Crusaders - a final before which Cheika presented each of his players with a personally engraved golf driver as a form of motivation.

"He just wanted us to have a big swing on it," Ashley-Cooper said. "The message was 'boys, have a crack'.

"He was big on imagery, big on mindset and kept the group completely engaged.

"He had this really unique ability to keep everyone engaged, and ability to inspire."

With only a one-year contract at Tigers, there is huge pressure for Cheika to do exactly that.

Not that he is likely to mind.

"That's 'Check'," said Ashley-Cooper. "He loves that pressure.

"He will do everything he can to be successful."