Bank on Sam to make up distance like a champion
On a wintry Sunday evening late last summer, a bedraggled figure put his hood up and head down in isolated defiance of the horizontal rain and chill wind. The scene could have passed for something straight out of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, the classic early Sixties film based on Alan Sillitoe’s screenplay of his novel about a Borstal boy finding redemption in the power of endurance.
Unlike the movie starring Tom Courtenay, the action took place not on a level playing field but on a steep gradient across a bridge over the M4 in the hills above the northern suburbs of Cardiff. For one man it marked the start of a similarly uphill struggle towards a goal infinitely more distant than Courtenay’s.
Sam Warburton had just got himself back in one piece after returning from one punishing trip to New Zealand with Wales and there he was taking the first steps towards returning with the Lions. The soft option would have been to stay at home and wait for the squall to blow itself out.
The 60-metre shuttle runs upwards across the bridge had to be done, no matter how foul the weather. Pushing himself through the physical pain barrier would have been nothing compared to Warburton’s anxiety over the confusing messages made by the Wales management over his captaincy.
He ended up losing it but not before a fractured cheekbone sent him into the autumn series far enough behind the eight-ball for his place to be under renewed threat from Justin Tipuric. That he came through it all to win the biggest single prize the European game has to offer says everything about his ability to keep bouncing back.
A lesser man would have consoled himself with the thought that he had already captained the Lions on one tour, that such an achievement would have been justification in itself for resting on a bed of laurels. Warburton’s hunger for more was what fired him through that stormy August night and every barrier since. Now, with the three-Test series less than a week away, another looms in his path. Ground lost through another short-term injury and the rising double challenge posed by a pair of Irish wing forwards have conspired to leave the captain fighting for his place.
Warren Gatland spelt out that exact scenario before the Test pack virtually announced it yesterday. Whether the Welsh open side finds himself outflanked by Sean O’Brien for the No. 7 jersey and Peter O’Mahony for the armband remains to be seen but their performances in Rotorua have made Warburton’s climb look too steep.
Like true champions, Warburton responds when the chips are down. Should he find himself sitting out the start among the supporting cast, then he will be the first to stand four-square behind whoever happens to be wearing jersey No. 7.
His skills as a natural people person makes him the ultimate team player. Martin Johnson, the only other Lion to lead successive tours, acknowledged that Keith Wood ought to have had the honour in Australia in 2001 because of what the Englishman saw as the Irishman’s superiority as a communicator.
Alun-Wyn Jones, touted by so many pundits for the top job after replacing Warburton as captain of Wales, has not been slow to present a prickly public persona in after-match interviews. In that respect he belongs more to the Johnson school of tell-them-nothing than Warburton’s natural readiness to answer any question.
Should he prevail against the odds and the Lions win the series, some day some one ought to put a blue plaque on that motorway bridge as the place where it all began.