There seems to come a stage in the careers of long-serving players, especially those battering their way along up front, when they never actually recover from an injury. Alun Wyn Jones hurt his shoulder in a monster collision with Sebastien Vahaamahina of France in the Six Nations last season and once again had to undergo the process of rehabilitation, as he had done so many times for so many different injuries.
That injury was significant because it may well have cost him the captaincy of these Lions. He only came back to play for the Ospreys in the recent Pro-12 semi-final. The doubts almost certainly shoved Warren Gatland in the direction of Sam Warburton, who was making a faster recovery from his afflictions.
No one seems to speak these days of a recovery from injury. Wyn Jones merely talks of “managing” it, and like other players, speaks of “rehabbing”. It is not so much a matter of recovery but of finding ways to get back on the field without the risk of too much pain and too much lasting damage.
Whatever the fate of the Lions this time, he will go down as one of the great forwards of the era, with 110 caps for his country and now on his third Lions tour. Adam Jones, who was part of the Ospreys crusade alongside Wyn Jones, calls his friend: “The most incredible person I have met in sport.”
His upward curve is easy to chart: in 2009 as a relatively inexperienced tourist, he was chosen for the first Test in Durban against the Springboks but never quite measured up to the task. Certainly, it took Gatland quite a time to see the idiosyncratic, intelligent and even difficult lock as a leader.
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But when Warburton was invalided out of the 2013 tour to Australia, Gatland turned to Wyn Jones, who was a magnificent leader and lifted the series trophy at the end in his kit with Warburton in his civvies.
The evidence of yesterday’s match is that he will last the course on his third tour. Wyn Jones was outstanding, his endurance was a wonder. “It would be too easy to make excuses about travelling and about us not knowing what the Barbarians were going to bring. We have got to be above that,” he said.
He is a professor of rugby, intelligent enough to give telling analysis after the end of a hard game when players would rather be anywhere than facing the media. He said that he was disappointed that the Lions did not get more of a squeeze on their opponents in the set-piece. “We did not function as well as we might. There were a few missed lifts defensively [in the lineout], we had a few opportunities to drive mauls but we tripped ourselves up with the transfer of the ball or they got a hand in. People talk about poor preparation but it was not poor preparation so much as poor on-field execution.”
Was it the performance which could even challenge Maro Itoje for a Test place? It is way too early to say, even though the attractions of playing a hard-core forward such as Wyn Jones are obvious.
Another contender in the locking position, Iain Henderson, began brightly yesterday but began to struggle long before the end and was replaced. Courtney Lawes, a different build and a different type of lock from Wyn Jones, will have his say either on Wednesday or on Saturday, and his athleticism also has its attractions.
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And it seems at the moment that George Kruis will fill one of the Test positions because of his matchless skill and tactical nous and the excellence of his execution. Gatland is not inclined to consider Itoje as a blindside flanker so that would leave the astonishing young Saracen and the Osprey veteran to fight it out for the other position.
Yet it would be so easy to be dogmatic about the relative strengths. Few people are in the class of Itoje but consider the evidence of yesterday’s game at Toll stadium. Wyn Jones appeared to be everywhere in the loose, hammering into the contact in both attack and defence, slowing down the ball for the home team and clearly taking a very vocal role in the huddles.
Eight years on from his first Lions tour, the lionheart is still beating strongly.
