Obsession could carry Shane right to the top
THE opening words of Shane Lewis-hughes’ own Twitter profile say it all: “Obsessed to be the best.”
It’s fair to say the 23-year-old from Rhondda is a young man on a mission.
Lewis-hughes is still very much in the early days of his career and remains a work in progress.
But you can already see he is single-minded and has a steelyeyed focus. To put it another way, he is crazily committed.
That ceaseless desire to improve is driving him on to produce the kind of display we saw in Parma on Friday night when he was integral to Cardiff Blues’ 16-6 victory over Zebre.
He was just into absolutely everything during 80 minutes of tireless endeavour, following up his eye-catching contribution in the win over the Ospreys last time out.
Hugely effective in both attack and defence, he was a willing and purposeful carrier, while he put in tackle after tackle, knocking down the Italians with a succession of big hits.
He possesses that priceless ability in the modern-day game, he wins the collisions.
At 6ft 4in and 18st 11lb, he has the raw materials and he uses them to good effect, crossing the gainline with ball in hand and driving opponents back over it with dominant defence.
As if that were not enough, he also pilfers possession, both at the line-out and the breakdown.
Blessed with a prodigious spring, he gets up so high in the air and puts real pressure on opposition ball.
Early on against Zebre, he stole one of their throws and from that moment on they were spooked, with their line-out crumbling in the face of his athleticism and the leaping of Seb Davies.
The Blues blindside also played a big part in the visitors ruling the roost at the contact area, getting in a great jackal position over the ball to secure either turnovers or penalties, while his disruptive mauling work is exceptional with the way he wraps himself around the carrier.
All in all, it was a pretty complete display, as he redoubled his efforts and dug even deeper following the red card handed to his fellow back-rower Josh Turnbull on 43 minutes.
As Tom Shanklin said on Premier Sports, it was “everything you want from a six”.
It could hardly have been more timely, with the Wales squad for the autumn internationals announced tomorrow.