Disappointed Cheika will continue 'evolution'
His job is safe for now, but four defeats against England and three to the All Blacks show how far behind Australia are to world the leading nations.
Cheika has often labelled 2016 – a year in which Australia fielded 13 debutants – as "transitional" and he was in confident mood despite a 21-37 loss to the Eddie Jones-coached England team at Twickenham at the weekend.
"I'm very positive about the team as a whole," Cheika told a post-match media briefing.
"I'm seeing the improvements we're making."
Cheika rued Australia's mistakes, saying they had been a feature of all their encounters with England this year.
"They play a pressure, conservative style and in Australia they scored a lot of tries off errors.
"They play a really good solid game, are very well coached, and you don't win 14 in a row out of luck."
Australia's bid to equal the 1984 Wallabies in completing a tour Grand Slam of wins over the four 'Home Nations' ended with last week's 27-24 defeat by Ireland.
But this tour also featured a Test against France and Cheika agreed that five internationals in as many weeks was too heavy a schedule.
"We've made that point back home already," he said.
"Five Tests are difficult but I don't think that had anything to do with the performance tonight."
Cheika also lamented the Wallabies' inability to put together a complete 80-minute performance, after a second-half slump against England at Twickenham.
Leading 16-13 after an excellent first-half display, Australia were unable to continue after half-time.
"Everyone knows the game goes for 80 minutes so you have to play both halves as best you can," Cheika said.
"We've played some great rugby over the year and we've played some poor rugby, and the second half was in the middle.
"The first was good, but we needed to score more points and we had a lot of opportunities down there.
"We got a few penalties, but we needed another try to go further ahead. In the second half we needed to react to stop the momentum that England created."
Cheika, despite suffering his ninth defeat in 15 matches this year, said there were reasons to be positive given the relative inexperience of his squad.
"There were obviously a few decisions that we wouldn't have agreed with, but in the overall context of the game we needed to work out how we were going to break their momentum in the second half," he said.
"They play a relatively conservative style to put you under pressure and we know that.
"And we did give away a couple of tries off a dropped ball and a quick tap where we turned our backs which is unforgivable.
"Even with a few decisions like that … we had opportunities to break the momentum but we made errors and it cost us.
"I'm very positive about the team as a whole. Seeing the improvements, we're scoring tries that we wouldn't have scored last year.
"We're making the investments that we should have made in 2008-2009."
Source: AFP & AAP
