Peter Jackson: Ryan Bevington still has time to climb out of the wreckage

The old year took an unusually savage toll of the toughest, meanest, ugliest breed in the game, the prop. From the All Black centurion Tony Woodcock at one end of the global spectrum to Cian Healy and Dan Cole at the other, some of the biggest beasts in the dark arts found themselves in bits and pieces.
Seriously hard men conditioned in the high-pressure business of keeping it up found themselves spending far too much time lying down. A few, most notably England‘s Andrew Sheridan, had to call it quits.
One tight-head who did manage to stay intact physically ended up shot to bits emotionally. In the space of a few months, Adam Jones went from out of this world to out of work, as much a victim of Welsh Rugby‘s grubby politics as of his ability to grapple with the changed set-piece procedure.
National treasures are not supposed to fall apart in the face of the scrum-engagement law. The pain he felt last summer while wondering where his next crust would come from was nothing compared to the plight of a French prop whose reign of terror coincided with Jones’ birth in the late Seventies.
Gerard Cholley, as fearsome now in his Sixties as in the lawless days of yore when he doubled up as a paratrooper and a heavyweight slugger, was probably hurting more this Hogmanay than at any time since the days when he saved the French Rugby Federation the expense of hiring an anaesthetist.
Castres, his club, finished 2014 at the bottom of the Top 14. Those who remember how he once laid out four Scottish forwards at Murrayfield in the same Five Nations’ match, will interpret that as a sign that the long arm of the law is evening up the retrospective score.
As other current practitioners of the grunt-‘n-groan trade, among them Alex Corbisiero and the God-fearing Euan ‘Never-on-a-Sunday’ Murray, wrestled with the everyday hazards of the job, along came an irate Italian with a slapstick reminder of the old maxim, that a prop cannot talk and think at the same time.
In a tirade at Leicester after his old club had beaten his new one in the Champions’ Cup, Martin ‘For-FFFF’s-Sake’ Castrogiovanni did almost as much for the reputation of the prop as a public speaker as Sitting Bull did for General Custer’s 7th cavalry.
The modern upwardly-mobile prop deserved a far better spokesman. Nobody fits the bill better than a Welshman who, through no fault of his own, spent far too much of the old year under repair.
Ryan Bevington managed one minute of Test rugby last year, the final 60 seconds of Wales‘ Six Nations‘ opener against Italy in Cardiff. The onset of a condition known as ‘Gilmore’s Groin’ has kept him out of action on all fronts for ten months.
A native of Porthcawl, Bevington is bright and articulate.  At 26 he already has one World Cup under his belt and would dearly love to be heading off to another.
He is smart enough to realise there is no point making glib statements, that first he has to feel his way back at club level before reinforcing an Ospreys squad in the throes of a serious attempt to end Leinster’s monopoly of the Pro 12.
After five seasons and almost 100 matches of plain sailing, Bevington will have taken twelve months to recover from the full force of Gilmore’s Groin by the time he returns in the coming weeks.
“Injury is a fact of rugby life and we call it ‘The Dark Times.’ The first month or so is not too bad because you know your body is benefitting from the rest but after that, it’s tough.
“All your mates are training and you’re stuck on the sidelines watching, day after day. Then you get the setbacks. I’ve had three – an injection which put me out for three months, a second injection for another three, then surgery for three more.
“I had the fourth setback just before Christmas with another op. That was the hardest of the hard times because I’d set my heart on getting back in time for Christmas.
“That’s when you really appreciate the support of those who have been through the same thing, as Joe Bearman and Tom Smith have at the Ospreys. They kept saying: ‘Look mate, you’ll be fine. Be patient.’
“It gives you time to appreciate what you have already done and what you still want to do. I was lucky enough to get to the last World Cup and I remember Ryan Jones telling me to make sure I enjoyed every minute of it because none of us knows when the chance will come again. By then Ryan had missed two World Cups.
“I’d love to be part of the next one but I can’t look that far ahead. I’ve got to get back for the Ospreys and if I miss the World Cup, well that’s sport, unfortunately.   But it’s still the game we play and the game we love.
“Being out for any length of time is a matter of how you handle it.  You can see a silver lining on most clouds if you look hard enough.  I was able to spend Christmas with my family (wife Lucy, daughter Sophie born six weeks ago), paint the baby’s room and help out at my local club, Porthcawl.”
Bevington’s ability to handle adversity ought to stand him in good stead. He has ample time to get himself back into peak condition well before the summer trial matches for the right to be among the World Cup chosen few as No.1 contender to the world’s most-capped loose-head, Gethin ‘Old Bones’ Jenkins.
As a native Ospreylian, Bevington had only one wish for the New Year: “To beat the Scarlets and to be fit and healthy.    That’s all we ever wish for…”
But as the Scarlets reminded their neighbours yesterday, you can’t have everything…