A year after taking charge of a side in disarray, Australia’s beaten coach, Michael Cheika, vowed that finishing runners-up at the Rugby World Cup was “just the start” as they seek to close the gap with New Zealand.
Cheika, a popular figure at this tournament, said Australia had a squad that would continue to improve as they try to close the gap on what has been called the greatest All Blacks side of all time.
Cheika, who took Australia to the final almost exactly 12 months after taking the job, said: “You stay at it and keep trying to improve, keep testing yourself again. We’re lucky we get to play them against in the Rugby Championship, so we can keep trying to improve. You’ve got to mark yourself against the best and they’ve been No1 for a while.
“We’ve made good ground and we’ve got to keep growing. At this point in the tournament, I said to the lads don’t be counting down – this is just the start.
“We want to do really good things for Australian rugby going forward, both by the way we play the game and the results as a consequence. The more we test ourselves, the better we’ll get.”
The coach said he felt Australia could still have overhauled the All Blacks, having got within four points of them during the second half following Tevita Kuridrani’s converted try.
He added: “We could easily have gone home but the heart and the courage that has been built in this team and will last us going forward was such that they didn’t want to do that and stayed in the battle until the end.
The All Blacks coach, Steve Hansen, also paid tribute to their vanquished opponents: “At 21-17 they could easily have won the game. We’d like to acknowledge them for being the opponents they were.”
Stephen Moore, the Australia captain, praised Cheika for the job he has done since taking over.
He said: “We’ve spent a lot of time understanding what it means to pull the jersey on and play for Australia. Tonight we just weren’t good enough and that was it. There has been terrific support from back home and we would have loved to have delivered tonight but that’s the way it goes.”
Cheika, who said he was disappointed his staff had not been allowed on to the pitch to sing their national anthem with the players before the match, added that a pre-game furore over a close-up shot of notes containing tactics had not unduly concerned him. “It’s not like there was any super tactics in there,” he said. “What do you do? It’s nothing to cry about.”
Instead he was more keen to talk about the pre-eminence of David Pocock and Michael Hooper, how far the Wallabies had come as a side and of better times to come. He said: “Believing has to start somewhere. One person starts, you get another person and build a bit of a crowd.”
