Wales’ grand old totem Alun Wyn Jones remains a man for big occasions
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Three minutes to play, Wales are three points up, and down to 13 men. France, who have just scored their third try, have the ball in their 22, Arthur Vincent charges, thump, into Alun Wyn Jones, he falls, Jones is already back on his feet. Brice Dulin has it now, thump, Jones catches him, too, France work it wide, and upfield, Romain Ntamack carries it across halfway, thump, there’s Jones again, he’s limping and winded. Now Gregory Alldrit has it. Jones tags him from behind, a split-second after he releases his pass. A knock-on, Wales win the ball. Tomos Williams looks around for someone to take it on, and there, a yard away, Jones is waiting. He takes it. Another thump.
The ball’s recycled. Then, a penalty.
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Jones starts at the whistle, stands up right, stares at the referee, sets his jaw, shouts more orders to his team. France kick up field, catch the line-out, drive for the line. Overtime now, and Camille Chat has the ball, thump, Jones again, Chat staggers, falls, play rolls on through the phases, to Vincent, Jones arrives just after the tackle this time, and swoops in with his long left arm to try and steal but he’s knocked backwards away from it. France go one way, then the other, Jones tracks the ball, turns his head in time to see that overlap opening up on the far left wing, too far for him. By the time Dulin crosses the line, he’s finally stopped running.
Six men have won four grand slams, every one of them played at least some of their careers before Italy joined the tournament. Jones would have been the first to do it in the modern era, after the Five Nations became Six. He won one in 2008, when he was a 22-year-old, still finding his feet in Ryan Jones’ team, another in 2012, well established now, a fixture in Sam Warburton’s side, and the last in 2019, when he was leading them himself. In all three of those years, Wales had home advantage for their final fixture. They’ve won 13 grand slams over the years, but only one of them was finished off away from home, that was in Paris too, fifty years ago, which tells you how rare and hard a thing it is to do.
The rest of that 2008 team Jones played with are all well out of it now, some are working as coaches, some in TV or on radio, one’s playing rugby league for kicks later this weekend, another, his old mate at lock Ian Gough, is having fun flying stunt planes and riding superbikes. And there’s Jones, 13 years later, 35 years old, still flogging himself through another Test, one of the best, and most exhilarating, of his career. Maybe by the time he finally retires the scientists will have figured out exactly what he’s made of, it’s certainly something much tougher than flesh and bone. Maybe they quarried him out of the ground in the Preseli Hills, or poured him out of a forge at Port Talbot.
With France in this sort of form, the Stade de France felt like no country for old men. Jones, though, was in the thick of it. These days he controls the centre of the field, so the game flows around him, like a torrent around a boulder in midstream. In the opening minutes, as France poured forward, moving through the phases like a boxer working a speedball, Jones made one, two, three, four, five tackles in just three minutes. Soon after, he was knocked flat by Damien Penaud, who hit him at full tilt, a thunderous thump that didn’t seem to slow him at all.
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In between all that tackling he was barking orders to the men either side of him, scattering them this way and that to cover the gaps, and badgering the referee, often while he was on down on his knees scrabbling around with one hand, trying to win a turnover. Off the ball, Jones has an uncanny habit of being on the edge of the action, ready, waiting for the next play, he’s often the first to fall on a loose ball, and he’s invariably there on the shoulder of his fellow forwards when they drive for the line. Watch Dan Biggar’s try back and you’ll see him in the background, ready to pounce, one stride behind, but, in his head, one step ahead.
He will hate that they lost, not so much for what it cost him, (who’s really counting, when you’ve won as many caps, and matches, as he has?) but because you figure he took all that talk about Wales’ poor form in the autumn personally, and bristled at the way his team, and their coach, were being written off after a run of bad results, and decided to make a project of proving everyone wrong this year. Of course, he’s already done that much, shepherding this Welsh team through the tournament the way he has these last few weeks. And, old as he is there will be more chances, a last Lions tour later this summer, and, who knows, maybe one last tilt at the World Cup in 2023.