“You’re an inspiration to your team mates.” “No I’m not.” “Yes you are…”

Lions Tour Update

Thursday was a busy day for Lions captain, Alun Wyn Jones. Not only did he have another busy, bruising practice and training session in the morning, but he endured an equally busy media schedule afterwards. Having faced the world’s media on a crowded Zoom meeting with over 80 journalists, he was required to conduct one-on-one, exclusive interviews with the rights holders for the tour. 

Naturally those asking questions behind the security of their laptop screens and spared the piercing glare of Jones carried on pushing him for a reaction to the Rassie Erasmus video. He glared, he simmered, he gave short, curt answers, but he did not boil over. It was perfectly clear to me watching the press conference that there would be no Rassie Erasmus questions when it was my turn to interview him for talkSPORT.

I knew that he was famously uncomfortable talking about himself. His standard refrain is to talk about the team rather than individual performances, especially his own. So that seemed like a good place to start, especially considering his astonishing, professional era record of 11 consecutive Lions Test matches dating back to the last tour to South Africa 12 years ago. “Given everything you have achieved in a Lions jersey over such a long period, you are clearly an inspiration to this squad, you just have to wear that, don’t you?” I asked. 

“I don't know about that, I think they are your words,” Jones replied, on cue. No, they’re not. Every other player and member of the coaching team I’ve interviewed in the last 32 days on this tour has described him as an inspiration.

“But they will respect other people's words. It's been a lot longer journey than the four years I've potentially alluded to in the past but you definitely get wiser as you get older. But to be out here now, with the chance to win the series, it’s very special. But it (the record) will be all be for nothing unless we win the series. And for me, being part of a test team and a squad with so much focus, that is the most important thing,” Jones said. 

There is something quixotically satisfying about trying to get brilliant, modest people to talk about themselves. So I was determined to keep going. “Your work ethic is famous,” I say. “You’re known to run between training drills when your team mates are trying to catch their breath. Where does that come from?”

“It's just a pretty simple ethos to work hard. You know, I'll get some people that may scoff and say ‘why is he doing that’ or whatever. It’s, well, you know, I'm not - I don't profess to be the most skillful or the fastest or the strongest, but I can work hard in in my own realms. And that's what I'll continue to do,” Jones replied. 

Given all the talk about the Lions needing to raise the tempo even higher for the second Test against a desperate Springbok team, I asked the unexpectedly soft-spoken giant of a man whether he had, in fact, been required to bring some of the squad ‘down’ from the high of the first Test win before ramping them up again as the second Test approached.

“I don't think you necessarily have to consciously bring anyone down. You know, we're elite level sport here, there is always that element of ‘come down’ after a performance, it  happens naturally. It doesn't have to be focused on or forced, because guys recover in different ways and, you know, we were very conscious to make or give, or ensure, rather, that people did have the opportunity to switch off on the Sunday and the Monday morning,” Jones said. 

“There’s that natural restoration, if you liken it to a test match week in the Six Nations or our Autumn campaigns. So, I appreciate the question, but it happens naturally. But let’s not forget, this is a Lions series so the motivation is already there, it doesn't have to be instilled or reignited because everyone has worked so hard to get here, you want to carry on with it.”

The great man wasn’t even supposed to be on the tour, of course, having dislocated his shoulder in the Lion’s ‘warm-up’ test match against Japan at Murrayfield. He described the experience of being back at Heathrow’s Terminal Five just two and half weeks later en route to South Africa as “surreal”. I suggested the whole tour was still surreal as we surveyed the landscape at the Arabella Country Club where the Lions are based, by themselves, with just a skeleton hotel staff for company.

“Yes, well, it is – obviously I missed two weeks of it anyway, so it's gone a bit around the houses for me. I started the tour from Swansea to Jersey, back to Swansea, Cardiff, Doha to Cape Town with Terminal Five in there somewhere, so it has been very different. But in many ways, it's made it more special. The experience has been heightened for a lot of players [back to the team and squad again] because the tour was in jeopardy for so long.

“Obviously not having fans out here has been disheartening, the travelling support you get on a Lions tour is second to none. But we can still represent everyone back home and you know, hopefully get the job done,” Jones said. 

It takes 48-hourly PCR tests and ongoing battles with security guards at both Arabella and the Cape Town stadium to get anywhere near the Lions, but once inside their den it is obvious how much they are enjoying the tour, even in such extreme and odd circumstances. In the case of Alun Wyn Jones, it is also obvious how quick we are to judge sportsmen, and women, by their ages. At 36 he is regarded as not just a ‘veteran’, but positively beyond his sell-by date. 

His hair may be thinning on top and few lock forwards play beyond his age, but he looks much younger and more vibrant up close (well, from our four-metre interview distance) than he does on TV. I ask how much longer he would like to carry on. “That’s an open-ended question to which I could only give you an open-ended answer,” he says, chuckling. But he has just signed a year’s extension at his Club, Ospreys, so there will be no hanging up the boots in a blaze of glory if the Lions do win this series. Unless he changes his mind.     

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