FROM PUPPY FAT TO TOP DOG
Alun Wyn Jones becomes Wales most capped player tomorrow. It has been some journey...
UP above the Swansea and Neath valleys sits a modest rugby club. A single metal rail separates two pitches, each with black and red striped posts at either end.
A green corrugated iron shed is the only real feature of note, aside from the clubhouse which contains a shrine to the greatest forward — perhaps the greatest player — Wales has ever produced.
As chairman Richard Scannell guides us into Bonymaen RFC’s bar a lost local asks if this is the town’s boxing club. ‘It’s not,’ he says with a grin. ‘ But there’s boxing every Saturday, during each home game!’
This is where Alun Wyn Jones — who will tomorrow become Wales’s most-capped player, featuring in his 130th Test at the World Cup against Australia — became a man.
Jones’s first coach, Kevin Brooks, describes what it is like here in winter. ‘It’s 200ft up — perfect for altitude training!’ he laughs.
‘There can be quite extreme weather. There are three or four valleys around, and we’re exposed to the coast, so the wind comes whistling across with hailstones.’
Perfect for a teenager to find his grit, then. Al, as they call him here, has always been Big Al. Martin Kelly is redecorating the clubhouse while Brooks chats. Kelly’s boy, Tom, played hooker with Jones as a teen. ‘When I first saw him he looked like flippin’ Big Bird!’ Kelly says.
Brooks continues: ‘ His mother Ann brought him when he was about 10, as she worked in the school across the road. God, he was huge compared to everyone else on the field! Wide, heavy as well as tall. But he was a gentle giant out there. He thought he could hurt people, but he didn’t want to. He was so big he used to get two or three of the opposition trying to wind him up.
‘He was always above it. The discipline of the guy... you can see it now, he’s a proper captain.’
Behind Brooks is a tribute wall to Jones. There are three pictures, all showing him holding a Wales flag aloft, with ‘ Bonymaen RFC’ written above the dragon after the final Lions Test in 2013.
Brooks threw it to him in Sydney that day, when Jones had noticed him in the crowd, and the captain paraded it around the pitch on the lap of honour. That was the last they thought they would see of the flag, but months later Jones came to Bonymaen and brought it back.
The third picture, therefore, shows Jones presenting it to the club. ‘ Thanks for the loan of the flag,’ Jones has scrawled on the main image of himself.
They have produced three fully fledged Test players at Bonymaen. Malcolm Dacey won 15 caps in the 1980s at fly- half and Richard Webster played 13 times at flanker between 1987 and 1993.
In one corner of the clubhouse is a picture of those two and Jones pouring pints at the bar from a decade ago. While Bonymaen are proud of all their players, there is only one who became a great.
They knew he would make it. In the Under 13s, Brooks and his co-coach Keith Howells took the boys up to Murrayfield for an international club tournament called the ‘British Energy Finals’.
Bonymaen beat English and South African clubs and then Scottish side White Craigs 35-12 in the final.
‘He was like a man among boys even at that age,’ remembers Brooks. ‘He had massive hands, and playing with a smaller ball he would run with it in one hand — very similar to the Fijian guys.’
Current Wales team- mate, hooker Ken Owens, recalls: ‘The word went round that he was good. He was always a superstar coming through.’ By 2003 Jones made the Ospreys academy, and linked up with his name- sake, tight-head prop Adam.
‘I can’t possibly criticise anyone for this, but he had a bit of puppy fat on him,’ the 95-cap prop says.
‘He was a big lump and it was a struggle to lift him. But the more he started training, you could see how competitive he could be. He had the drive, will to win and that transformed into how he is now.
‘We hear stories about the greats, like Michael Jordan, and whatever they do they’re competing. He’s certainly like that. From a young age, the more he got into the system there was only one way he was going — to the top.’
Jones’s first cap came, way back in 2006 on the tour to Argentina.
He played blindside flanker as a 20-year-old, before moving to lock where he found his home. Jones made his first of four World Cup squads 12 years ago.
‘He was the youngest player, so when we went to the 2007 World Cup he had to carry the “Love Spoon”,’ explains Tom Shanklin who played with Jones for four years.
‘At the capping ceremony Alun Wyn had to do a speech where he explained why he carried it with him and what it means.
‘Because he was young everyone wanted him to mess up so we could have a good laugh. He had to research about it, make sure he had all the facts. He went on stage and explained it all perfectly. Fair play, he nailed it! You just thought, “Oh right, you’re one of them are you? Good at everything!”’
‘He’s the best player I’ve ever played with,’ adds Owens. ‘You can’t compare eras, but he’s the bbest Welsh professional player evever,’ adds Adam Jones.
‘He’s always monitored his nunutrition, diet, and worked on hihis flexibility. He spent six mmonths trying to learn how to do the splits — and did it.’
TThis relentless pursuit of peperfection has seen him buy a hohouse in the Mumbles purely bebecause it had a swimming pool he could do his water aerobic exeexercises in. But that drive has alsalso seen him become a tough tastaskmaster.
‘I know he comes across, at timtimes, a bit crotchety, shall we saysay?’ says Adam Jones. ‘He’s got a closel group of friends. If he gives you the time of day you’ve earned his respect. If you’re not pulling your weight, you won’t get that.
‘He’s mellowed since he’s become a dad to two daughters. I remember it was my daughter’s third birthday party and Toy Story was her favourite film — she had all the characters — and Al turned up dressed as Buzz Lightyear!
‘She was like, “Oh my God, who’s this 6ft 6in Buzz!?”’
Alun Wyn Jones has gone to infinity and beyond in Lions and Wales red — in March becoming just the seventh Welsh player to win three Grand Slams, racking up nine consecutive Lions Tests and this week surpassing the national caps record at 34 years old with plenty more in the tank. And if he manages to lead Wales to World Cup glory, the boy from Bonymaen will further secure his legend.