Warrior Jones still prefers the shadows to the limelight
Wales captain may be the antidote to ‘personality’ but he is so deserving of his SPOTY nomination
In an era when celebrity is king, how heartening it was to see Alun Wyn Jones on the shortlist for BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Alun Wyn is the antidote to ego, a personality by dint of proper, wholesome virtues – singlemindedness, humanity, empathy, defined by grit as well as graft, a man for the shadows while others bask in the spotlight. If there were to be a category for spiritual totems at the award ceremony in Aberdeen next month, the Wales captain would be a shoo-in. Perhaps they should rebrand the trophy: The Selfless One.
Wales and Alun Wyn are a symbiotic triumph, punching above their weight, defying the odds and only beaten when the last gasp of effort has been squeezed from scorched lungs. That much was true to the end in Japan, where it took a 76th-minute penalty from South Africa fly-half Handre Pollard to end the spirited resistance of Jones’s team in the World Cup semi-final, a side who had been ravaged by injury but who were still swinging, still battling, as the final whistle neared in Yokohama.
It was only six days later in the same stadium that we came to appreciate the measure of Wales’s performance. The Springboks were masters of the moment against England, yet they had been made to labour against Jones and Wales.
It is rare in a team sport for an individual to make the SPOTY shortlist. Jonny Wilkinson, for obvious reasons, managed it in 2003 – but there have been precious few others. Jones himself would never willingly seek the limelight. He was that way inclined when The Daily Telegraph approached him for an interview prior to this year’s Six Nations Championship, but once he committed to it he gave it his complete attention, meeting in his local café near his home in Swansea, providing a lift afterwards to the Mumbles so that the photographer could get some atmospheric shots and not demurring when the young snapper hesitated about getting down on the sandy beach in case it ruined his new trainers! There have been plenty of examples of his straightforward, no-airs-andgraces nature, from his sincere attention to pre-match mascots to his insistence on shaking hands at Wales’s last World Cup press conference with every journalist who had covered the Wales beat during the tournament. Alun Wyn certainly does not agree with all, perhaps not even much, of what is written, but he respects the fact that people have a job to do.
The tributes paid to Warren Gatland in recent weeks have been merited, given the head coach’s success and length of tenure. But he had a reliable lieutenant riding shotgun. Alun Wyn was the only survivor from the first team that Gatland ever sent into battle, in the opening match of the 2008 Six Nations Championship against England, the Gatland-jones double act having its first taste of success with Wales’s first win (26-19) at Twickenham in 20 years.
There is always a danger of eulogising sportsmen and women when they get nominated as if their souls were blemish-free. Two years after that maiden victory for the pair at Twickenham, Gatland let rip at Jones after he had “cost us victory” against England having been shown the yellow card for tripping Dylan Hartley, leading to a spell in the sin-bin during which England scored 17 points. It is not often a coach singles out a player for public rebuke, but Gatland did and Jones later thanked him for it, welcoming the fact that it showed a “southern hemisphere cutting edge” from the New Zealander, something Wales had been lacking. The fact that this year’s Grand Slam was their third under Gatland is no fluke. Hard-nosed warriors are at the heart of those achievements.
All these paeans to Alun Wyn for being a bloke’s bloke would mean little if he did not deliver first and foremost as a player. Close as the relationship between coach and player has been, neither of them does sentiment, as Gatland showed when dropping Brian O’driscoll for the series-defining third Lions Test against Australia in 2013.
At 34, Jones the player continues to deliver, hitting rucks, winning line-outs, topping tackles. That is why he has made the SPOTY shortlist. Your head will tell you the other contenders have accomplished magnificent things. Wales, after all, finished fourth in the World Cup. But if the heart is allowed a vote, then Alun Wyn Jones it is.