Peter Jackson: How WRU left Adam Jones in limbo…. and then out in the cold

As recently as six months ago, Wales were proposing to sign their ‘Hair Bear’ on a Union contract at circa £300,000-a-year. Now they have declared him surplus to requirements.
Adam Jones has gone from national treasure to national reject, from supposedly the No.1 tighthead in the global propping business to, at best, No.4 in Wales. Falls from grace in rugby hardly come much bigger.
England dropped Steve Borthwick, then their captain, from a considerable height before the last World Cup although that was nothing compared to the furore in New Zealand before the 1991 World Cup over the All Blacks discarding Wayne Shelford – and he had never lost a Test match as captain.
What makes Jones’ case all the more intriguing is the Welsh Rugby Union‘s murky role in it and the policy, as pursued by chief executive Roger Lewis, of signing five international players to put in the empty stables next to skipper Sam Warburton.
The ‘overarching strategy’ was to prevent them leaving for the golden fields of France. Leigh Halfpenny did precisely that, three of his colleagues – Alun-Wyn Jones, Scott Williams, Rhys Priestland – preferred to stay with their regions which left the Union in pursuit of Jones.
In early February the Union informed the Ospreys that they were ready to grant Jones his wish of a central contract, provided the region were unable or unwilling to retain his services.
The Ospreys, then doing their level best to keep him, accused the Union meddlers of competing against them, of creating a bidding war and undermining their negotiations.
Two months later, in mid-April, the Jones contract was still on the Union agenda. By then negotiations with the Ospreys had floundered against the political rocks created by Lewis’ failure to settle the conflict with the regions.
It left Jones in an understandable state of confusion, his equally confused regional employers unable to say whether they would be playing in the Pro 12, a 16-club English Premiership or Europe. He opted for WRU proposition.
That cleared the way for the Union to complete the deal. Four weeks after the end of the Six Nations, they told the Ospreys that if Jones signed for the Union, his region would have first refusal on his services for a limited number of games, free of charge. No hint at that stage of cold feet.
As head coach, Warren Gatland would determine when Jones would be available to the Ospreys and how often. The idea was to ensure that, “Adam is in the best physical condition for the 2014-15 season and in the run-up to the 2015 Rugby World Cup”. By mid-summer, Jones had been left so high and dry that he spent a few demoralising weeks out of work before signing for the Blues in Cardiff. His name was not on Gatland‘s wish-list of ten players for central contracts as drawn up in mid-July and revealed in The Rugby Paper.
The WRU has maintained a deafening silence on the Jones contract, presumably on the basis that if nobody asks any awkward questions the issue will disappear as if it had never been mentioned in the first place.
At some time after mid-April, someone decided Jones was no longer worth signing. Gatland gave a clue when announcing the player’s omission from the 34-man squad for next month’s four Tests: “The change in the scrum engagement put a lot of pressure on tight-heads and probably dropped their value by half overnight.”
The new procedure took the sting out of the engagement, all but neutering ‘the hit’ and leaving the tight-head to find an alternative way of splintering the opposing loose-head. It hardly amounts to a full explanation for Jones’ demise.
The writing, of course, had been on the wall with his embarrassingly early withdrawal from the first of the June Tests in South Africa followed by his omission from the bench the following week.
So with brutal rapidity, Jones has disappeared from the team, from the bench and now from a squad of 34. Samson Lee, the man in possession, and Aaron Jarvis, the Osprey who ousted ‘The Bear’ at Swansea, were always going to be two of the three tight-heads.
Gatland’s preference for Rhodri Jones as the third man leaves Jones stranded five caps short of a century for Wales. The coach says the door is still open, as any sensible coach would, but in an ever-evolving game of increased velocity, Gatland has clearly decided Jones is no longer up to speed.
The irony of his fate will not have escaped him. Jones chose to stay in Wales, even though he may have had no choice in the matter, and gets the elbow.   Luke Charteris and Dan Lydiate, the invisible men of the Top 14, have hardly been spotted in France all season and yet they are both picked.
Meanwhile a “gutted” Jones promises he will “keep trucking along”. Blues coach Mark Hammett says his tight-head is in the best shape of life which only goes to show that All Black hookers have very different takes on the same subject.
*This article was first published in The Rugby Paper on October 26