Wallabies World Cup: Sean McMahon’s selection a reward for effort

AS HE prepared to play his first Test match in almost a year Sean McMahon admitted there were times he feared he might be remembered as a one-season wonder.

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 on Sunday morning — McMahon admitted there were times he feared he might be remembered only as a one-season wonder.

After all, after bursting onto 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.”

Sean McMahon pictured at Notre Dame University ahead of the clash with the USA. Picture: Stuart Walmsley/ARU Media

Given the strength of Australia’s backrow 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 open side-flanker to New Zealand. Admittedly it was arguably the best number seven in the world in David Pocock, but when he was injured before the first game — the shock loss to Ireland — 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.

“I felt bad for Scott,” McMahon said. “I’ve learnt so much from him and he’s helped me so much at the Rebels, but when an elite player like that can’t get in the squad it just shows you how hard it is. I’m stoked to be here.”

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 backrow for the Wallabies opening World Cup match against Fiji. While he can fill any position in the backrow, McMahon will play open side against the USA, with McCalman at six and Palu number eight.

He sees it as his chance to force his way onto the bench for the big World Cup Tests.

“Competition for those spots is so hot, and that’s a good thing. When we came away on the Spring tour Cheik was new to the side and it was the start of something new. A year on we’re all on the same page. We know what Cheik expects from us and we know what we expect from ourselves.”

Just talking to McMahon it is obvious that this is no longer the wide-eyed “gee-whiz how good is this?” kid of 12 months ago. Two Tests into the Spring tour Cheika had to rest him against Ireland for fear he was going to run himself into the ground.

He is now stronger physically and mentally. The Rebels’ Players’ Player of last season, he says the struggle to make it back into the Wallabies has 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.”