McMahon pushing for shot off bench
WALLABY Sean McMahon heard a little voice in the back of his head a few months back saying, “You’ve blown it. You’ll never make the World Cup.”
Typically, he told it to shut up and kept tackling everything in sight.
As he prepared to play his first Test match in almost a year – against the USA in Chicago tomorrow morning – McMahon admitted there were times he feared he might be remembered only as a oneseason wonder.
After all, after bursting on to the international scene aged 20 with a blockbusting off-the- bench performance against the Barbarians in the first match of last year’s spring tour and forcing himself into the Test side against Wales a week later, he was lauded as the find of the season.
Tests against France and England followed and then … nothing.
“You do have second thoughts,” he said, after completing training at the Wallaby camp at Notre Dame university in Illinois.
“You hear the voice saying you won’t get another chance but then you just have to try harder and keep working at training.
“People talk about the second season syndrome. I didn’t want that to be me. You have to make it hard for them to leave you out.”
Given the strength of Australia’s back row at the moment, that is saying something.
At the last World Cup it proved to be Australia’s weakest link.
Then-coach Robbie Deans gambled on taking only one openside-flanker to New Zealand. Admittedly it was arguably the best No.7 in the world David Pocock but when he was injured before the first game it was a gamble that backfired horribly.
Pocock was injured again for all of last year, which opened the way for McMahon to make his dazzling debut, but with Pocock, Michael Hooper, Scott Fardy, Ben McCalman, Wycliff Palu and Scott Higginbotham all being rotated by coach Michael Cheika for this year’s Tests, it looked like McMahon had been put back on the shelf.
In the end it was his Melbourne Rebels teammate and mentor Higginbotham who missed out.
With Pocock, Hooper and Fardy combining superbly in the Wallabies’ recent win over the All Blacks, they would appear to be Cheika’s first choice back row for the Wallabies opening World Cup match against Fiji.
While he can fill any position in the back-row, McMa- hon will play openside against the USA, with McCalman at six and Palu the No.8.
He sees it as his chance to force his way on to the bench for the big World Cup Tests.
Just talking to McMahon it is obvious that this is no longer the wide-eyed kid of 12 months ago.
He is now stronger physically and mentally. The Rebels’ Players’ Player of last season, he said the struggle to make it back into the Wallabies had done him no harm at all.
“You’ve just got to keep pushing yourself harder and harder,” he said. “That’s how I intend to go right through this World Cup – 100 per cent the whole time.”