The Waratahs’ highly rated head coach Michael Cheika has revealed that he wants his team to be among Super Rugby Pacific’s title contenders during the 2027 campaign.

After recently serving as an assistant coach with NRL champions the Sydney Roosters, Cheika returns to rugby union with fellow Sydney-based outfit the Waratahs, who he previously guided to a Super Rugby title in 2014.

And he has made no secret that he wants the Waratahs to return to their glory days next year.

Keen for Waratahs to ‘win the comp’

“I’m coming here to get this team to try and win the comp,” Cheika said. “Like, isn’t that what we want to do at the end of the day? That’s it.

“I’ve always been like this. What you do now, where you are now and how you perform – even when I was a player overseas – is what’s important.

“Like I’d have a one-year contract. If I play good, well then I’m in charge. If I play rubbish, you can get rid of me. That’s fair.”

Cheika, who has taken over the Waratahs’ coaching reins from Dan McKellar, said it did not take much convincing for him to make his return to the Sydney-based outfit.

“If you’ve got to be persuaded by someone to do a job, or to be the coach of a team, that means you don’t want to do it,” he explained.

Cheika’s new-look side has some familiar faces in their ranks with veteran half-back duo Bernard Foley and Nick Phipps returning to the club, while Cheika has also brought in legendary Waratahs loose forwards Stephen Hoiles and Wycliff Palu to be part of his coaching staff.

Despite the aforementioned quartet’s previous successes with the Waratahs, Cheika, who has not coached in rugby union since leaving Leicester Tigers in 2025, is not looking back and wants his players and backroom staff to create new memories.

“You don’t want to watch old videos. You want to make your own movies,” he said.

“This group here hasn’t got it like when I took over these fellas when they were playing for the Waratahs. They had more international players in the team, so they’d experienced a different level of playing.

“Now we’ve got maybe five or six over on the Wallaby tour in total, so there’s a little less experience.

‘I want to show them something new’

“It’s also a different time, more than 10 years later. There are different ways of our footy, so I want to show them something new.

“I want to do things differently because I want to get a different outcome.”

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Cheika also had successful stints as the head coach of Australia and Argentina but insisted that returning to the Wallabies position is not on his wishlist for 2027.

“I want to be really clear about this, right, because I knew that’d come up,” said the 59-year-old. “There’s no springboards. There’s no ‘I’m going here to get there’. There’s no ‘I’m coming here to get this team’.

“I’m here to try and win the comp.”