Adam Jones is closing in on the most implausible of collision courses with the All Blacks coach who repeatedly dismissed him as too fat for Test rugby.
Wales’ sixth week of their wonderful odyssey leaves the original Hair Bear one more win away from the World Cup final and a likely confrontation with the New Zealand pack drilled by Steve Hansen, the man Jones blamed for ‘wrecking’ his early days.
Now the indispensable cornerstone of the Welsh scrum, Jones’ unbending role as arguably the most automatic of choices is in stark contrast to the misery of his World Cup debut, in Brisbane eight years ago.
Against England in the quarter-final, he suffered the humiliation of being substituted after just half an hour.
Hansen, then running the team after Graham Henry’s forced resignation the previous year, was adamant about Jones being a 30-minute player, overweight and under-prepared.
‘He didn’t think I could last any longer,’ Jones said in the aftermath of his second World Cup quarter-final against Ireland, when he went the full distance without any thought of being withdrawn.
‘Being taken off that early used to wreck me a bit. He never spoke to me about it, but I suppose it helped me in the long run because it gave me a thick skin.’
Jones made his debut off the bench against England eight years ago, when Sir Clive Woodward sent his reserve XV to Cardiff for a pre-World Cup friendly which Wales lost 43-9.
When Hansen decided that Jones had run out of steam against England’s first team in Australia less than three months later, he was replaced by the one other Welsh forward who will be running out against France in Saturday’s semi-final, Gethin Jenkins.
The lowest point of Jones’ early days arrived later that season in the early stages of a Six Nations match against Ireland at Lansdowne Road.
Hansen, who had been a detective in Christchurch before going into coaching full time, issued a damning verdict: ‘He is not very agile, not very mobile and soon runs out of energy.’
After a second unfulfilled World Cup in France, where Wales failed to survive the pool stage, Warren Gatland began his regime by giving Jones a stark choice — lose weight or lose your place.
He changed his diet and reduced his bulk to the right side of 20 stone, a downsizing based on reducing his huge intake of chips, chocolate and beer. Some 18 months later, the 30-minute man had become an everlasting part of the famed Lions’ Test front row, establishing himself as the best tighthead in Britain and Ireland.
Now that Jones is at his best fighting weight, a touch under 19 stone, nobody dares question his durability.
At 30, the Osprey from Abercrave in the Swansea valley has become a fully paid-up member of the alcohol-free zone as driven by the younger players.
‘Hardly any of the boys drink,’ he said. ‘None of the younger ones drink, which is a big thing. So the rest of us think, “We’d better not drink either”. There’s such a wide age range. Most of the boys would like a pint but we all realise how much is at stake. We will hope to save it for after the final.’
Jones, the third senior member of the Wales first team behind fellow prop Jenkins and the ageless Shane Williams, responds with typical candour to the question of whether he ever thought he would be where he is today, in the semi-finals of the World Cup.
‘No, I don’t suppose I did,’ he said. ‘But there has been a belief in the squad which has been getting stronger for some time. You have these young boys who are so fit and so professional.
‘People like me have to keep up with them, otherwise you fall by the wayside. ‘We’re ticking over nicely, the boys are on a roll and you don’t get the chance to play a World Cup semi-final every week.’
No amount of defeats in recent years have ever affected Jones’ status as one of the first, if not the first name on the team sheet.
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