KEY POINTS:
For a time last year, Wayne Smith worried that fast-tracking Isaia Toeava had in fact put the young man's career into reverse.
The ferociously talented 19-year-old was the shock inclusion in the 2005 Grand Slam tour and then given the chance to establish a midfield starting berth in
last year's Tri Nations.
It was a massive gamble. Toeava went to the UK on the back of just one NPC start.
Despite enjoying a reasonable rookie Super 14 campaign in 2006, he looked every inch the Christian tossed to the lions when he played the Wallabies at Eden Park last August.
His misery ended shortly after half-time when he was hauled off and a week later, he was a ball of nerves in Pretoria. Test football looked like a personal hell for Toeava and only those with ice in their heart didn't melt for the kid.
Test rugby had opened its jaws and swallowed Toeava whole and Smith felt the pain of being the one who turfed him into the water.
"We felt initially on the Grand Slam tour that if we didn't have a crack at him and show him the environment, then he had no show at the World Cup. He would be ready for the next one but we wanted to have a go at getting him ready for this one.
"We took a punt and thought the only way we could get him to take it seriously was to show our interest and try to get him up to speed quickly.
"I had some personal concerns, that maybe we had retarded his growth rather than enhanced it. That's not the case. He's shown he had the mettle all along to develop that toughness and I think we probably have accelerated that."
The second coming of Toeava was one of the more compelling stories of the Super 14. That's always the way when someone so broken finds the glue and puts himself back together in a far superior form to the original.
The admiration for Toeava was all the greater given the perceived height of his fall. The All Black selectors talked him up throughout 2006. Even when his game disintegrated at Eden Park, there was talk of the many positives on show.
No one saw it. There was confusion as to why the selectors were persevering with a player who had a bit of light but it was buried deep under a bushel.
Then, as this season developed, everything started to make sense.
The searing pace took Toeava outside defenders. The skills were apparent when he frequently off-loaded out of heavy traffic and the vision was obvious when he popped up in places that afforded him plenty of space.
He played with conviction, like someone who knew deep down he was good enough to be there. A mental awakening has largely been deemed as the driving force of Toeava's renaissance.
But Smith would see the growing maturity and confidence of Toeava more as a by-product of the physical strides the utility back made during the off-season.
When the top 32 players headed to Europe last November, Toeava stayed in Auckland to sweat it out in the gym. By the time he emerged in February, he was five kilos heavier and in control of a frame that was far better equipped to cope with the supremely physical world of Super 14.
"He has certainly got bigger. When we first selected him, he had no training history. He had never taken the game seriously to the extent he was a professional footballer.
"We left him behind on the tour so he could work on himself physically. He found it hard physically being in the gym. He's about 100kg, retained his speed and is probably more explosive and he's retained that incredible skill level.
"He looks to me to be more determined and is playing with more self-belief. At the end of the Tri Nations last year, he just felt that he was not ready for that level. He's got a chance to prove that he is in the Tri Nations."
Toeava hinted in the Blues semi-final that the big occasion no longer scares him. Smith will be sleeping a lot easier if Toeava can prove for sure that is the case in the next few weeks.
