Michael Cheika has claimed he has no idea if he will be coaching Argentina in 2024 after their Rugby World Cup campaign ended with a disappointing 23-26 bronze final defeat to England in Paris.
It was July 2022 when the Australian, who guided the Wallabies to the 2015 final in London, first took charge of a Los Pumas Test match but he gave no definite indication that he will still be in charge when the South Americans reassemble again next year.
“I have no idea,” he said post-game on Friday night at Stade de France when asked if he was continuing on as the Pumas head coach.
“I haven’t even thought about it. I’ll go to Argentina later in the year and we will have a talk about how things went and what the future holds.
“But it’s not really what I’m thinking about. I’m totally disappointed for everyone, for our crowd, for our people as I think we deserved to win tonight and for one reason or another we didn’t.”
Skipper Julian Montoya added: “We don’t know if it is his last game so I am not going to speak about that. He has never said it was his last game so nothing I can say about that.”
Switching to the manner of their three-point defeat, which was a big improvement on the 10-27 loss that Argentina suffered seven weeks ago to 14-man England in Marseille, Cheika reckoned: “It was fine margins. Three points.
“We had a charge down. We hung in there really well, I thought we fought back well. We didn’t get the rub of the green on many things but we still stayed in the game. It’s just the way it’s meant to be.
“It’s been alright,” he added, reflecting on Argentina’s fourth-place finish. “We have had a good campaign but the players deserved better tonight. I am disappointed with the way the whole game was run. The way the game was refereed and the consistency.
“Our players have worked for two years to try and get something here. I know we are one of the lower nations. We are not England, New Zealand, South Africa or any of those guys but at the end of the day, it’s hard. I feel for the lads as they deserved more than what they got out of today.”
The Montoya verdict on his team’s effort was: “We want to inspire a new generation in our country and we wanted to get the win. We made some mistakes, some things we could not control.
“We need to be better at controlling things. We scored a try but then we conceded points straight after their kick-off. We fought for every ball so I am proud of the team.”
