Rugby World Cup: How Michael Cheika saved Australian rugby

Michael Cheika, Head Coach of Australia poses for selfie photographs with fans after the 2015 Rugby World Cup Pool A match between Australia and Uruguay. Photo / Getty Images.

When all is said and done at this World Cup, the impact of a decision made in April may come to be fully realised.

Wallabies coach Michael Cheika is having a profound influence on this World Cup and the game is much the better for it.

Australia have become a lot more like Australia and the credit for that sits almost exclusively with him. Smart, tough, thoughtful, innovative, passionate and reassuringly grounded, Cheika has saved the Wallabies since he arrived last October and, by extension, he's saved Australian rugby.

There was, to not put too fine a point on it, an ungodly mess across the Tasman this time last year. The Australian Rugby Union were flirting with insolvency and the Wallabies had been belted by the All Blacks, Springboks and Pumas in consecutive games.

They were also in the middle of a terrible incident involving Kurtley Beale and the Wallabies business manager - the outcome of which was the sudden resignation of coach Ewen McKenzie.

Cheika, having coached the Waratahs to the title earlier that year, was the only valid choice and he took the job with a week to prepare for the end-of-year tour and an agreement he'd return to Super Rugby in 2015 for one last campaign in 2015.

Cheika was the last throw of the dice for the Australian Rugby Union. The Wallabies didn't have much longer with their public before patience would run out. The Australian game needed heroes, winners and a better culture of humility and professionalism. It needed the Wallabies to be role models. There had been too many poor performances in the last decade - too many late-night incidents.

A year on and the Wallabies have been a revelation. Cheika has been superb, disciplined and clever in his selections and smart in the way he has brought in Mario Ledesma to fix the scrum.

The Wallabies win and lose with equal good grace now. In their one stated aim of making the nation proud of them, they can safely say box ticked.

It's not that much of a stretch to say Cheika has also saved Sanzar rugby. The Rugby Championship was waning without a strong Wallabies contribution and, with South Africa's Super Rugby sides diminishing in power due to senior Springboks heading in their droves for Japan and Europe, the pressure is on for Australia to hold their end up a bit better.

With Cheika in charge of the Wallabies, players - despite the new overseas selection clause - will want to stay in Australia and have a crack at test football.

All of which puts the decision by Sanzar in April this year to not sanction Cheika when he entered the officials' room at halftime during a crucial game one of the biggest in the body's history.

Cheika, who is on a suspended sentence, wanted clarity form referee Jaco Peyper as to how he was ruling the scrums in the clash against the Blues.

The right thing for Sanzar would have been to highlight the seriousness of the offence and enforce a zero-tolerance policy. Cheika may have been banned from all coaching for six months and ruled out of the World Cup.

Instead, Sanzar issued Cheika with a mild rebuke and pretended it was all a media beat-up.

If Sanzar had made the right call, the Wallabies might not have become the team they are. Instead of now being a growing favourite to win, they could be scrapping for survival with Wales this weekend.

The game in Australia could have imploded. Could it have survived one more unsavoury scandal and another quick-fire change of coach?

Probably not, so Sanzar can argue the end in this case justified the means. But that will be a hard line to digest for the Springboks or All Blacks if either or even both of them lose to the Wallabies at this World Cup.