The hunt for the next NSW Waratahs coach has narrowed to an old and familiar name. With Joe Schmidt, the club's reported top target, having turned down the job, attention has swung to Michael Cheika -- the man who delivered the Waratahs their only Super Rugby title and who is now weighing a return to rugby union from a stint in league.
Cheika, currently on a one-year deal as an assistant with the NRL's Sydney Roosters, is the sentimental favourite to take over the Rugby Australia-owned franchise for 2027. He coached the Waratahs to the 2014 Super Rugby crown before leading the Wallabies to the 2015 World Cup final, then took Argentina to the 2023 World Cup semi-finals and guided Leicester to last season's Premiership final.
The vacancy opened when Dan McKellar resigned in June with a year still to run on his contract, following two underwhelming seasons in which the star-studded Waratahs finished eighth, winning only five of 13 games. As recently as the closing rounds McKellar had insisted he was staying put.
"I'm contracted for next year and I certainly don't want to worry about that sort of stuff," McKellar said at the time. "You've just got to roll with the punches. Times like this make the good times feel even better, and they'll come. I'm in this for the long haul."
Within weeks he was gone. "I step away knowing I have given my all to help turn the Waratahs' fortunes around over the last two seasons," McKellar said in his departure statement. "As a coaching group, we have all worked incredibly hard to drive positive and necessary change. As this journey for the Waratahs continues, I wish all the players and staff the very best for the future."
Defence coach Locky McCaffrey will steer the side through the Super Rugby AU competition in September, but the board wants an experienced operator installed for the full 2027 campaign -- and Cheika fits that brief better than anyone available.
His loyalty to NSW is not in doubt. Earlier this year Cheika drew a hard line on where he would and would not coach in Australia, ruling out the Queensland Reds outright because of the derby rivalry he built up as a Waratahs man.
"I feel like some lines are drawn," Cheika told Stan Sport's Inside Line. "When I coached the 'Tahs -- morally, maybe -- I can't go wind that back and then say, well, it's the same against them, when I go up there. Because those words, when you say them as a coach, when it's that type of derby, they're heartfelt, they're passionate."
That same loyalty is precisely why NSW supporters see him as the obvious fit for their own vacancy. Cheika has also revealed he recently rejected the chance to coach Munster, underlining that geography and allegiance, not a shortage of offers, dictate his choices.
The complication is that Cheika is embedded in a league programme for now, and any move back to union would need Rugby Australia and the Roosters to align on timing. But with a home Rugby World Cup on the horizon in 2027 and the Waratahs desperate to arrest years of underachievement, the pull of unfinished business at the club where it all began may prove hard to resist.
