THE contrast of understanding in the Lions midfield could barely be greater. On one side of him, Stephen Jones has Jonny Wilkinson, alongside whom he has played only for 20 minutes, on the other he has Dwayne Peel, a man he knows so well that they speak their own language.
It would take Wilkinson a while to get up to speed if Jones and Peel were to continue to communicate in Welsh, but the language barrier goes deeper than that: it is about understanding, timing, shared experience. The Jones-Wilkinson axis at No 10 and No 12 in the first Lions international surely represents the greatest of Sir Clive Woodward’s calculated risks, but Jones would never see it that way. “Jonny’s such a talented individual,” he said yesterday, “he’s easy to play alongside anywhere.”
To be fair, Jones was a little emotional at the time. He was being asked repeatedly what it meant to him to have just been selected as the Lions fly half and he was responding by repeatedly putting his fist to his heart and talking about honour, pride and “the highlight of my career” and invoking the spirits of Phil Bennett and Barry John.
But to be fairer still, while Jones had every right to be so wholeheartedly locating his touchy-feely side, he is so sunny and positive an individual, you could not imagine him being anything other than absolutely delighted to find Wilkinson outside him at centre. When Woodward talks about how well the Welsh contingent are touring, he surely has Jones near the forefront of his mind. As well as some half-decent rugby, Jones brings personality and a splendidly cheerful, laid-back brand of charisma to the Lions midfield, an interesting counterpoint to the intensity of his No 12.
To the question “who’s going to call the moves?” you would never, for instance, have Wilkinson responding: “Well after the first five minutes of the game, we’ll have a chat, see how things are going and move on from there.”
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But it is, of course, something of an achievement to have displaced Wilkinson from his preferred position, especially given Jones’s late arrival. Because of commitments to Clermont Auvergne, his French club, he was not able to play in the first two games of the tour. He was then thrown in for the defeat by New Zealand Maori and a conclusion drawn by many was that his chance had gone.
That was the view of J. P. R. Williams, his countryman and notable former Lion, who piped up in a newspaper column the opinion that Jones was the victim of a conspiracy and had been selected for the hard Maori game in order to fail. Jones was unaware yesterday of the rantings of one of his famous forefathers and preferred to dwell on the legacy of two others, those whose Lions No 10 jersey he inherits.
“This is a huge honour,” he said. “I just have to think of Barry John and Phil Bennett. Growing up in Wales, every youngster’s dream would be to play for the Lions. Your heritage, the Wales team of the Seventies, is ingrained into you. It makes everything more special.”
The link with Bennett is particularly close. Bennett sought him out in the team hotel before Wales’s grand-slam victory over Ireland in March. Before his departure for New Zealand, Bennett had also sent him a card wishing him the best for the weeks ahead.
The link with the opposition coaches is close, too. Jones worked fleetingly under Graham Henry, but he credits Steve Hansen, Henry’s assistant, as having a massive influence on his career during his stint at the Wales helm.
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“Steve’s an honest guy and he made a few things clear to me,” he said. “Sometimes you don’t like to hear the truth. He made it clear how I had to improve in certain areas if I was going to be selected.” Jones’s commitment to fitness and training changed overnight. Hansen, he said, “opened my mind”.
Hansen may soon be regretting it. Jones has come from a long way back in the pecking order to claim the Lions’ famous No 10 shirt but he now has an authority in the position and ability to spark a fast attack. Do not presume, he says, that the Jones-Wilkinson partnership means a lot of kicking. “Hopefully as a backline we can flow and play with rhythm,” he said. “Jonny and I have had a few days to train together. It’s been good so far. Obviously the first couple of days we were trying to work out each other’s type of game, it’s taken a little while but things have gone pretty well.”
One of the fascinations for Saturday is whether such confidence turns out to be misplaced. Like Woodward, however, Jones has real conviction about this, albeit conviction with a less businesslike, more happy-go-lucky delivery. And the way he tells it, you want desperately to believe him.