Michael Cheika: We are at the beginning of our journey

The pain of a World Cup final defeat to New Zealand will linger for Australia but Michael Cheika believes his rejuvenated Wallabies are only at the beginning of their journey to challenge the mighty All Blacks.

Australia’s bid to upset the odds at Twickenham on Saturday night, less than a year since their first game under Cheika, came up short as New Zealand retained the Webb Ellis Cup in a 34-17 epic. Yet their three tries to two defeat filled the former Leinster and Waratahs coach with pride and hope that the experience can serve as a platform to greater things for a side that was down in the dumps just 12 months ago.

He had been delighted by the way his players had fought back from 21-3 down after 42 minutes to close the gap to four points with 15 minutes to go when just settling for defeat would have been the easy option.

“We could easily have gone home (at half-time),” Cheika said. “Everyone would have been happy with a good campaign and we could have said, ‘okay, we’re sweet with that’, but the heart and the courage built in this team which I believe will last us going forward was such that they didn’t want to do that. They wanted to stay in the battle until the end, which I thought we did.”

The task for Cheika, who plotted a first Australian win over the All Blacks for four years in August as his new charges won the Rugby Championship at his first attempt, remains how to catch up to a New Zealand side which has dominated rugby for more than a decade and lost just three times since its 2011 World Cup success.

“You just stay at it and keep trying to improve and keep testing yourself against them. We’re lucky, we get to play them regularly in the Rugby Championship. You’ve got to mark yourselves against the best and they’ve been number one for a while.

“I think we’ve made good ground over the last 12 months and we have got to keep growing. I said to the guys, ‘don;t be counting down lads, this is just the start’. We’re just starting.

“We want to do really good things for Australian rugby. So the more we test ourselves against South Africa, New Zealand, Argentina in our championship, and on the outbound tours to the northern hemisphere, the better we’ll get.”

For now, though, Cheika can reflect on an impressive first year of his tenure since replacing Ewen McKenzie as Australian head coach, the squad he inherited looking scarcely credible World Cup contenders 12 months ago.

“I didn’t think about (making the final) at the time, I was just a bit surprised to be even asked to do the job, coming from where I’ve come from,” he said.

“As we sat down and started to hatch a plan you have to believe. Unfortunately, we came up short in the end but the goal wasn’t to make the final, the goal was to win.

“I know people didn’t really expect us to but the believing had to start somewhere. One person starts and you get another person believing and another and you can try and build a bit of a crowd there and when they get together you can do things. That’s the mental side of things that I believe we’ve really improved on.

“We’ve also established some new platforms for our play and some work off the field, just lots of small things. There was no one big light-bulb moment, just everyone doing those small things every day.”