Devastated, but Jones will be back, says Biggar

DAN Biggar has been speaking about how a ‘devastated’ Alun Wyn Jones will handle the huge disappointment of missing out on the Lions trip to South Africa.

Tour captain Jones dislocated his shoulder just seven minutes into Saturday’s warm-up match against Japan at Murrayfield.

It means he won’t be travelling to South Africa, with fellow Wales second row Adam Beard replacing him in the squad and Ireland scrum-half Conor Murray taking over as skipper.

Fly-half Biggar is a long-time team-mate and friend of Jones and knows just how much of a blow missing the tour will be to him.

“Obviously it’s pretty disappointing to lose your captain and your talisman six or seven minutes into the game,” he said.

“He was pretty down in the changing room, as you’d expect.

“He’s obviously going to be devastated because it’s been a big focus for him over the past year or so.

“It will be tough for him to take.

“I know he’s got a young family back home and they’ll take up plenty of his time.

“I think Al will be disappointed. But he’s been in the game a long time and achieved pretty much everything. If there is a silver lining, it’s not something he hasn’t done before.

“But he’ll be down for a few days.”

As for how the squad will deal with the situation, Biggar said: “It’s one of those things, we’re lucky in the group that we’ve got a lot of good leaders, good speakers.

“But you’ve only got to look at Al’s record and experience. It’s going to be a huge loss.

“Things move so quickly on these tours. When you’re in camp, the rest of us almost have to put it to one side and look at what we’ve got.”

Biggar was named man of the match following the 28-10 victory over Japan, strengthening his position as the front-runner to wear the No. 10 jersey in the Tests against the Springboks.

“We started the game really strongly, played some solid stuff in that first 30-35 minutes, did the basics really well, played territory, got over the gain line and moved the ball when there was space,” he said.

“A lot of things we worked on during the week came into play in that period.

“It was a bit of an armchair ride for me in the first hour.

“Fair play to Japan, they came out and had a game plan in the second half where they weren’t going to kick the ball.”