![\"Felipe](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/d4ae16fcadada104d705ff7dc6eb3516dd1f7225.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nContepomi has kept in close contact with Cheika and does not doubt that his former coach and mentor would be able to coach in the NRL if the opportunity was available.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve learned rugby league because of him and Knoxy, he thinks outside the box and the bigger the challenge is, the more he embraces it.So for me, he\u2019ll definitely be successful at rugby league,\u201d Contepomi said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd one interesting thing that I\u2019ve always asked him (Cheika), because it\u2019s very interesting how you see a lot of rugby league coaches coming into rugby union, but not that many from rugby union to rugby league.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s difficult to get in rugby league, but I think with the openness of his mind and bringing things from rugby union into rugby league and his way of experimenting with things, he\u2019ll be very successful in rugby league. I\u2019m sure he will.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Felipe Contepomi playing for Argentina in the 2011 World CupCredit: The Press<\/p>\n
The greatest parting gift that Cheika left the Pumas, according to Contepomi was giving belief to players that previously doubted they could take on the best teams in the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Cheika is a winner and his winning mentality is unbelievable, so for me as a player, that\u2019s the first thing I\u2019ve learned from him, but also when I became an assistant, I\u2019ve learned he instilled a winning mentality,\u201d Cheika said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe instils that belief, it\u2019s hard to explain it in one word because it\u2019s an everyday thing. It\u2019s how he sets up the standards, how he just goes and says, \u2018boys, we\u2019ll do this\u2019. Or how he prepares and sometimes not all the shots work, but he still keeps firing shots and he\u2019s a guy that is really positive.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Saturday, Contepomi will face another familiar Wallabies coach, Joe Schmidt. Although Contepomi just missed out on playing under Schmidt while at Leinster, he did engage regularly with the New Zealander while he was leading Ireland. Contepomi\u2019s work as an assistant coach at Leinster gave him a close view of Schmidt\u2019s ability to pull apart game plans and make them perfect.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe (Schmidt) did beautiful things, and I always loved his detail and how Leinster played and then how Ireland played under him and how they dominated,\u201d Contepomi said.<\/p>\n
\u201cPreviously, an Irish team or an Argentine team were more different, we don\u2019t have those (Pacific), Islanders, it was difficult to dominate New Zealand or South Africa or Australia.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw Ireland win and I said, well, if Ireland can do it, why can\u2019t Argentina? And it all started, like, Joe was kind of the guy that implemented or started making Ireland that sort of team…I still keep in touch with him all the time because I think he\u2019s a brilliant guy and has a brilliant rugby brain.\u201d<\/p>\n
The last time Contepomi faced Schmidt, the Wallabies lost 67-27 to the Pumas in Santa Fe. As a qualified doctor, Contepomi understands that one badly off-colour day does not denote an emergency. Similarly, the former playmaker is expecting a far more dangerous Wallabies side on Saturday in Townsville.<\/p>\n
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\u201cFor me, this game starts from zero, it (Santa Fe) was a year ago, it was one of those days, the week before they beat us,\u201d Contepomi said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was one of those days that maybe things came our way, but I think I\u2019m really expecting a very tough encounter because I think Australia, it\u2019s always been a nation with unbelievable athletes.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can see it. You come to Australia and you see people and they are all athletes. They all swim, they all jump, they all run, they do everything.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo when you play against Australia, you know you\u2019re going to play against a team of athletes. So it\u2019s a huge challenge for us in terms of how to try to impose our game plan against a team that you know that if you give them one chance, they\u2019ll take it and they are lethal. They\u2019re ruthless… so we need to be at our best if we want to get on the right side of the result.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Contepomi has kept in close contact with Cheika and does not doubt that his former coach and mentor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-121588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}