AWJ out to climb his final mountain
FOR the last 17 winters, Alun Wyn Jones has been trying to find a way from Swansea to Mont Blanc and the summit of European club competition. For each of those winters, he has wound up taking all sorts of dead-end routes in search of the Alpine nirvana. On the three occasions when his Ospreys managed to get as far as the foothills, they were knocked out at Vicarage Road, then Thomond Park; places not known for the scent of edelweiss nor the sight of snow-capped peaks.
Now, for the third time in as many weekends, Jones ventures into what looks dangerously like the latest in a series of last stands. After the losing Six Nations farewell in Paris and the winning one in Swansea last week against the obliging Dragons, nothing short of a victory as grand as any of his career will save the Welshman’s European road being shunted into another cul-de-sac.
Saracens in their own inhospitable corner of north London offer the Ospreys a long-overdue prospect of settling an old score, so old that when they last met on knock-out business the Farrell in Sarries’ midfield wasn’t the current captain of England but the future head coach of Grand Slam Ireland.
Fifteen years later, Jones remains the sole survivor from the starting line-up on April 6, 2008 when Glen Jackson did the kicking while Farrell, junior, was still at school. It can be seen in retrospect as the day when the protagonists took off in different directions. Saracens, through to their first semi-final, soared ever upwards. Seven more semis followed, the first five in successive seasons from 2012 to 2017.
Ospreys’ Champions Cup arc, in contrast, has barely got off the ground, their two titles as Celtic Champions in what used to be the PRO12 counting for nothing in Europe. Since losing at Limerick in 2009, their record of miserable consistency amounts to one quarter-final, against Biarritz in San Sebastian the following year.
Those who made the journey to the Basque country from Ospreylia will swear that but for a mysterious refereeing decision during the last frantic seconds of an 18-carat gold thriller, their team would probably have gone on to the final. Had they not been counted out by the odd point in 57 (28-29), Jones would have caught a glimpse of Mont Blanc towering above him before vanishing like a mirage. There would always be next season and the next expedition, another day, another chance to navigate a way of planting a Welsh flag on the summit.
And now that the most relentless of foes, Old Father Time, is counting down the hours, the oldest lock in the game is left to wrestle with the reality that it’s now or never as far as Europe is concerned. Lose and there will be no more tomorrows.
For the world’s most-capped player, one who has given body and soul to the Ospreys’ cause since their birth as created by the shotgun marriage of Swansea and Neath, winning really is the only thing.
The more he and his pals are written off, the greater the odds stacked against them, the more he likes it. They have been stacked against him before over the last 20 years but surely never to the same extent as right now.
That said, only a fool would dismiss today’s tie as mission impossible. Before the Six Nations intervened, nobody had been tearing it up in the Champions Cup more than Toby Booth’s birds of prey.
They went to Montpellier, outplayed the champions of France 21-10, beat them again in the Swansea return and then found the nerve to do the same to the champions of England, Leicester in the Tigers’ den. Saracens will have been reminding their players of those results all week long.
Even if Ospreys pick up where they left off in the East Midlands in the New Year and leave Sarries to concentrate on the English Premiership, they will be confronted by another mighty obstacle as dubious reward for surviving the Round of 16: La Rochelle in the last eight.
For all the Grand Slams and Six Nations’ titles with Wales, and the monumental milestones passed en route, Jones has barely scratched the surface of Europe’s blue riband club event, never mind made his mark in the way other great second rows of the professional era have done.
Martin Johnson won backto-back European titles with Leicester. Paul O’Connell almost matched him with two Munster triumphs in three seasons, Fabien Pelous did a hat-trick of winning finals with Toulouse and last year Will Skelton lent his weight to La Rochelle’s triumph as their executioner-in-chief of Leinster.
The prospect of Jones going toe-to-toe with Australia’s ambling Alp of a second row would be no more than the 37-year-old deserves. It would also put him closer to Mont Blanc than at any time since the nearest of near-misses in San Sebastian 13 years ago.
Jones may appreciate the sentiment but he also appreciates sport’s perverse capacity for ensuring that its gladiators don’t always get what they deserve. Should that prove to be the case this afternoon, then the often prickly old warrior will make his final exit from Europe looking like The Grump with The Hump.