Bravo Lewis, even the best can bomb in Argentina

I’VE BEEN hugely impressed by each and every player on Wales’ summer tour, but I want to single out one man for special praise.

My award for player of the tour goes to Dillon Lewis.

I’m sure people will laugh at me – a tiny former winger – giving the gong to a tighthead prop, but hear me out on this one!

The intricacies of the scrum and set-piece might be a mystery to some of us, but what I do know is that Dillon has done his World Cup chances no harm in the last few weeks.

The first game with South Africa in Washington saw criticism of the match itself dominate the headlines rather than any real specifics surrounding the Welsh performance. For me, that was a shame. It took away from some fine individual displays of which Dillon was one. I know the Springboks rested a lot of their first-choice guys and I’m sure it would have been a different contest for Dillon if he’d been up against the Beast in Tendai Mtawarira and not a younger player.

Still, any South African prop is there because he’s worth his salt and Dillon more than held his own in that game both at the scrum and around the field. Then he went to the next level in Argentina.

I thought he was superb in the first Test in San Juan. The reason I want to pick Dillon is that from my own experience of playing in Argentina, I know how hard it is as a prop.

It’s difficult to emphasise enough how tough a prospect the Pumas are up front and I remember on one of my tours of South America we had Adam Jones in the front row and even he got a bit of a tuning!

I’m sure ‘Bomb’ won’t mind me saying that, because I do so to point out that even the best scrummaging prop I’ve played with experienced difficulties against the Pumas.

On his second straight start Dillon experienced no such problems. He shored up the Welsh scrum to make it rock solid and I was also really impressed with his maul defence work.

He was so good I was surprised to see him not start the second Test in Santa Fe and I’m sure Dillon would have been slightly miffed not to begin the game too.

But on the whole he has plenty to be happy about and the challenge for him now is to build on this next season. I hope he can get more regular game time with Cardiff Blues – he didn’t have that last season due to injury – and raise his game again. He clearly has the talent to be able to do so.