WILL NEW ROLE SEE A CHANGE OF LUCK FOR RYAN MIGHTY?
HOW must it feel if you turn up for work every day for eight weeks and your boss sees no need to make full use of what you are offering?
That was the lot of Ryan Elias during the recent Six Nations.
The Scarlets hooker was one of only two Wales squad players not to play a single minute during the entire championship, with Jarrod Evans the other.
Yet rewind four years and Elias was being fancied to make the Lions Test side for the series against South Africa this summer, with one writer noting the then 22-year-old had the Xfactor about him and another saying he had the stamp, motor and skills to make it big on the international stage.
But the script hasn’t gone to plan and this winter Elias found the door to the Wales matchday squad firmly closed, let alone the Lions.
In that respect, it’s been an altogether sobering season for him.
“The Six Nations was really frustrating for me and it was the same during the autumn,” he admits.
“I had some more game time in the autumn but it wasn’t the best of campaigns for me or for the team.
“Then I didn’t feature at all in the Six Nations. It’s a long eight weeks, then, just being in camp not playing.” No-one would argue there. With hindsight, things were cast in those early months of the season when Wales were fielding mix-andmatch sides and results were bad enough to prompt questions about Wayne Pivac’s future.
Elias played with three different second-row pairings over four games – and then people wondered why the line-out wasn’t a model of precision.
Contrast that to just one change in the Welsh front five during the entire Six Nations.
Asked if he tried too hard to impress during Ken Owens’s absence because of injury in the autumn, Elias acknowledges: “There was a bit of that. It was a massive opportunity.
“The campaign just didn’t go the way I would have hoped.
“It was the same for the team as a whole.
“The side in the autumn was totally different, more experimental, so I’d say there were a lot of factors that didn’t go my way.”
Ryan Elias in European action for the Scarlets against Bayonne.
It barely needs stating that for a hooker, the need to be on the same wavelength as his line-out targets is critical. The best partnerships can take months, if not years, to evolve.
“It’s about building relationships on the pitch,” says Elias.
“Sometimes, you have a week or maybe two weeks to build a relationship. But these things can take time.
“In the Six Nations we reverted to a team that had featured a lot, so the relationships were already there. They didn’t need to be built. And that clearly worked well.
“I went through a period of not playing much. I guess that is frustrating, because you want to be playing rugby.
“Then, it’s about trying to keep your mind in the right place because it’s easy to get down on selection or maybe things you read in the media – comments or whatever – but those are matters I just try to ignore.
“The best way to be is keep a level head and keep plugging away. Keep your head down.
“I’m a firm believer that the cream always rises to the top. Hopefully, that will be the case for me.”
Amid the defeats, traumas and lost line-outs of the autumn, it’s easy to forget how much Elias has to offer.
His star was high in the sky in 2017 after he stepped in seamlessly when injury ruled out Owens for the final weeks of the season.
There were few complaints about the Scarlets line-out back then as they swept to the PRO12 title, beating Leinster in Dublin in the semi-finals and crushing Munster 46-22 in the final. Against Munster, the Scarlets had a 92 per cent line-out, with Elias finding his jumpers with skill and accuracy.
He was also dynamic around the field, piling up 21 tackles over the two matches, and he brought a physicality in the tight. This was clearly a young player going places.
The Telegraph duly suggested he would be a Lion in 2021 and three out of five WalesOnline writers went further and predicted he would be in the Test XV in South Africa.
It’s not going to happen now. But maybe he’ll be there or thereabouts for 2025. Not wanting to offer any hostages to fortune, but trying to stay positive, he replies: “Could be, yeah – another four years.
“Hopefully, I will get a bit more game time over that period and by then the rugby would have done the talking.”
Fair enough.
To their credit, the Scarlets have looked to put an arm around Elias since his return from Test duty.
They see him as being an important part of their future and are trying to develop him as a leader. On Sunday he led the team that faced the Dragons in Newport in the Rainbow Cup.
What has the region’s head coach made of the season Elias has had?
“The only thing you can say is that