At the end of Harlequins’ training session, Adam Jones and Kyle Sinckler are blowing hard and strolling towards the changing rooms together, deep in discussion. The conversation between two members of the front-row union is punctuated by frequent hand gestures, much of the talking coming from Jones, with Sinckler nodding his understanding in response. Here is a picture of a master and apprentice at work.
“When I signed for the club, Conor [O’Shea] and John [Kingston] said they’d got two good young tight-heads that I might be able to help,” Jones says. “They told me one of them’s a posh kid [Will Collier], the other one’s a bit mental and needs reining in a bit. But I could see straightaway how good Kyle was potentially going to be. He just had some learning ahead of him, like we all do when we’re young.”
The lessons that Jones was imparting yesterday concerned the intricacies of mauling technique, the use of body position to prevent the opposition driving through a maul. “It happens at nearly every training session,” Sinckler, 23, says. “He tells me stuff and I go, ‘Wow, I’d never have thought about that.’ ”
In this way, England’s exciting new tight-head, who won his first four caps from the bench this autumn, is absorbing the wisdom being dispensed by one of the finest players to wear the No 3 shirt. More often now, at 35, Jones actually wears No 18, as he has been displaced from his club’s starting line-up by his protégé, but that was precisely the plan. One generation handing on to the next. “He’s making improvements all the time,” Jones says.
Unbeknown to Jones when he joined Harlequins 18 months ago, Sinckler had been watching and learning from him for some time. Seven years ago, Jones was in South Africa on the first of his two Lions tours and Sinckler, aged 16, was watching at home in Tooting, southwest London, while his mother, Donna, was trying to work upstairs.
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“I remember it vividly,” Sinckler says. “Phil Vickery didn’t have the greatest game in the first Test, then Bomb [Jones’s nickname] came in and played really well. When South Africa kicked that penalty at the end of the game [to win the second Test and the series], I was in tears. I was screaming at the telly and all the windows were open. My mum was shouting at me to shut up, saying all the neighbours could hear me. I was devastated.
“But I always knew about Bomb. So it was funny when he walked into the gym for the first time, held out his hand and said, ‘I’m Adam Jones.’ I said, ‘I know who you are.’”
He also knew, instinctively, how much he could learn from Jones. “He’s one of the best tight-heads that ever played, 95 caps for Wales, two Lions tours, however many grand slams . . .”
“Three,” Jones chips in, abruptly.
“Oh yes, three,” Sinckler says. “If I’m not asking questions of someone like that, I’m doing something wrong.”
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This is the modern, professional way of learning the tricks of a prop forward’s trade, a mentor guiding a promising young player towards his destiny. In Jones’s formative years, growing up deep in the upper Swansea valley, the lessons were rather more rudimentary. In his first game for Abercrave, aged 18, he played against a gnarled loose-head, who collapsed the second scrum and made sure that his knee made contact with Jones’s face on the way down. “Then, after the game, I was putting my face back together and this guy walks into our changing room, shakes my hand and opens up two cans of beer,” Jones says. “I learnt a lot about rugby that day.”
Does he feel modern props learn the game a different way? “It’s a different game now,” he says. “I don’t know how much stamping or punching goes on at lower levels, but it stood me in good stead, learning how to control yourself. And if you did respond, you’d just get your head kicked in anyway. You soon learn.”
The art of self-control is one that Sinckler, infamously lively in his teenage years, is learning as he goes along. Eddie Jones, the England head coach, has likened him to a character in EastEnders. In the week after Dylan Hartley, his captain for England, once again stepped over the line from bristling aggression to blatant foul play, Sinckler is acutely aware of the need to keep himself in check.
“When Bomb first came here, I was probably a bit over that edge, I’d let my frustrations show too easily, I’d get too emotionally involved,” he says. “Now when he sees me getting like that, he’ll say, ‘Calm down’ or just give me a look. He’ll remind me that you don’t want to show your opposite number you’re getting frustrated. There are loads of times I could have got sent off, but I’m trying not to make the same mistakes.”
Jones smiles sagely. “This fella would have been fine playing in Division Six in the Bridgend area back in the day,” he says. “Mind you, he’d have been sent off a few times along the way. But when he gets towards that cliff edge now and he’s about to fall off and try to knock someone out, he’s learning to wind his neck in. He’s doing well.”
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As he develops into a fully fledged international, a naturally powerful ball-carrier seeking to strengthen his set-piece work, Sinckler is also learning to educate himself. “He wants to learn and he learns very quickly,” Jones says. “You see the improvements he’s made in his scrummaging and that’s not down to me; his laptop is full of all the other Premiership teams and the way they scrum. But he can also do things I’ve never seen another tight-head do, he carries the ball more in a game than I’ve done in my career. He’s incredibly fast over the first ten yards. Starts blowing a bit then, but you can’t have it all.”
Along with the progress he has made working with Jones and Graham Rowntree, the Harlequins forwards coach, Sinckler cites his call-up to the England squad for the tour to Australia last summer as a seminal moment in his development. “I’d always thought I was fit, then I went to an England camp and suddenly realised I wasn’t where I needed to be. Eddie works you hard and it was a big shock to the system. So I’ve tried to push on really hard with that.”
Back in the bosom of his club, Sinckler is preparing for the European Challenge Cup game at home to Timisoara Saracens, of Romania, tomorrow, followed by Harlequins’ traditional festive Big Game at Twickenham, this year against Gloucester, for which more than 70,000 tickets have already been sold. The journey over the road from Harlequins’ home at the Stoop is one with which Sinckler is becoming increasingly familiar.
“I’ve loved winning my first four caps from the bench at Twickenham, but that’s nothing to shout from the rooftops about,” Sinckler says. “I’m nowhere near where I want to be, I’ve got to keep working hard on all areas of my game.”
Has Sinckler’s Welsh mentor identified any particular areas of weakness? “Yes, he’s a notoriously early finisher on a night out,” Jones says. “Six pints and it’s all over. He needs to develop his game, his tolerance levels. He’ll get there in the end.”
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With such a willing teacher, and his own thirst for knowledge, Sinckler’s development seems set to continue apace. “As a prop, you’re always learning, always maturing,” Jones says. “He’s only 23 and he’s already pushing Dan Cole hard for a starting place for England. It helps that he’s such a nice kid, too. And he’s only going to get better, which is good news for Harlequins and great for England.”