‘I was asked for three words to describe the match – they were: it’s always historic’

Alun Wyn Jones tells James Corrigan why he cannot wait for his 18th game against the old foe

It is not just the fact that only three of the starting English forwards have previously played an international at the Principality Stadium that gives Warren Gatland confidence that experience will prevail here in Cardiff this evening, but also the remarkable stat of his captain. Alun Wyn Jones has played in 17 Wales-england encounters – the same number as the entirety of the visiting pack.

As England prepared to take on the M4 and the Brynglas Tunnels yesterday, Jones walked out on to the pitch at the capital’s citadel looking every inch the towering talisman.

When it comes to this fixture, the 33-year-old has the stature in every conceivable sense. This will be the lock’s 132nd Test cap (he has 122 for Wales and nine for the British and Irish Lions), and only five players in the world have won more. One of them is Gethin Jenkins, to whose Welsh record Jones will close within six, but even his old team-mate have to bow when it comes to cross-border skirmishes.

Jenkins played against England 16 times, while on the other side of the list, Rory Underwood faced Wales on a mere 14 occasions. And what makes Jones’s mark all the more staggering is that he has started each time.

Yesterday lunchtime was no time for reflection, however, and Jones laughed when asked if he still felt as fresh as he did on his first tussle with England way back in 2007. “Do I look as fresh?” He said. “Look, I feel I have been well managed this year and when you step across the whitewash, it’s like being 21 again.”

The engine might be as good as new, but there can be no doubt all those laps have built up some precious nous and, as he put his squad through their Principality paces, it was clear that Jones is refusing to believe the hype, particularly not Eddie Jones’s comments that this is “the greatest Wales team ever” and this will be “the biggest game of the Wales players’ lives”.

“You will have to ask Eddie about all that,” he said. “But we’ve had big games against England before. You can go back to 2013 [when Wales denied England the Grand Slam by winning 30-3] and other big games and we’ve had crescendos in the past where we’ve met at the end of the series, not in the middle.

“It’s funny, I was asked to give three words to describe the encounter and they were, ‘It’s always historic’. The players on both sides know what they want to achieve and what this game means for the championship.

“But am I going to build it up? No, I will let you do that. For us, there is job to do. There is a danger we can get overly emotive and swept away and be tired coming into the game tomorrow, so there is that element of keeping our feet on the ground.”

Saying that, Wales have enjoyed the build-up, allowed to assume

the underdog role despite having won 11 matches in succession, equalling the country’s record of 109 years. And even though the first two displays in this championship have been far from impressive, and even though Jones was not about to go as far as Gatland in saying

“this team have forgotten how to lose”, he did acknowledge the streak was very much in their minds.

“We are very real about our performances of late,” Jones said. “To get the ‘W’ is the most important thing, but we are our own harshest critics in the fact we have left a few out there. I think we’ve had four disallowed tries in the first two games. That’s 28 points, which is a big difference, and we are well aware of that.

“So, yeah, there is more in us and the autumn feels a long time ago now, but we had that momentum then and we’ve maintained it. However you get that and achieve your wins, you want to keep your momentum and that’s what we will set out to do. There are people saying we’re poles apart in efficiency and performance. But the reality is we are both two from two.”