Just as one swallow doesn’t make a summer, one blunder – or two or three – won’t cruel the winter hopes of exciting Wallabies prospect Jesse Mogg.
The classy Brumbies fullback was a measure of cool, calm and collected for the opening hour of Saturday night’s Super Rugby final before kicking out on the full, throwing a sloppy pass and losing possession on the desperate final play as the Chiefs applied the blow torch in Hamilton.
In anyone’s books, Mogg lost his nerve in the pressure moments of a high-stakes encounter.
Wallabies coach Ewen McKenzie, though, remains a fan and says Mogg’s 15 minutes of infamy won’t deter him from throwing the 24-year-old one-cap rookie into the Bledisloe Cup cauldron against the All Blacks in Sydney on Saturday week.
“I’m not the sort of guy who gets interested in a player with a one-off performance,” McKenzie said after assembling his 40-man training squad on Monday.
“I never judge someone on one error or one mistake. It’s really performance over time.
“So the guys that are coming in from the Brumbies are the ones who have been doing particularly well consistently.
“I judge people on their potential. Every rugby player I know or have been involved with makes mistakes so it’s more about the positives they bring.
“I think he’s got a really good balance to his game. There’s a lot of up side to what he can do.”
Remarkably, given McKenzie estimates he has coached about 80 of the 170-odd Australian Super Rugby players, the new Wallabies coach had never even met Mogg before this week.
“I don’t know the guy. I’ve never even shaken hands with him,” McKenzie said.
“So I’m looking forward to meeting him and seeing what potential there is, in the framework that we think will be positive going forward.”
Five-eighth Matt Toomua is another Brumbies star in the mix for a Test call-up, with McKenzie insisting his likely reinstatement of his Queensland Reds pet Quade Cooper in place of incumbent playmaker James O’Connor was no fait accompli.
“We’ll see how we go at training this week, but I’m pretty pleased with him. I think Matt’s done really well over the finals series and they were all big games so you’ve got to respect that,” McKenzie said.
“A bunch of their guys have played really well, so I’m quite impressed.
“I’ve already said I want to establish a selection pecking order and then it’s up to the players to shift and change that around how we’re playing and what we need to do.
“You want competition. Every team that I’ve been involved has got competition for places and has got the best out of people.
“So we want competition in every position. I think there’s competition.”