Peter Jackson: Will next Warburton stand up now please!
Bridgeview, some 13 miles south of Chicago, was where Sam Warburton won his Wales cap, as a first-half substitute for Ryan Jones. As a squad made up almost entirely of Welsh reserves headed for the Far East, Robin McBryde could do worse than remind them of what happened in the Mid-West of the United States.
With Warren Gatland and Rob Howley once again otherwise engaged on Lions business, McBryde takes charge for the two Tests against Japan just as he did against the American Eagles four years ago when the same Welsh duo were on another continent with the Lions.
The eyes of the world may be elsewhere but Warburton’s rise from nowhere to the Lions captaincy ought to inspire every one of those jostling for selection against Japan this coming weekend. Someone somewhere in the ranks could be waiting to burst out into the next Lions captain, however implausible that may sound.
When the non-Welsh Lions took off for North America in 2009, Warburton was not the only uncapped Lion in the making. Jonathan Davies had made his international debut a week earlier, against Canada – the same Jonathan Davies now in the running for a Test place in Australia alongside Brian O’Driscoll and Manu Tuilagi.
A third current Lion, Ospreys hooker Richard Hibbard, also featured in the matches against Canada and the USA. So, too, did the one permanent member of Wales’ Six Nations team not picked by the Lions, fly-half Dan Biggar.
For every success story, there are, inevitably, no shortage of hard-luck tales around those who, for whatever reason, were unable to bridge the gap between Wales and the Lions. Many who were there in Harlem Avenue, Bridgeview when Warburton made his bow have long abandoned hope of becoming Lions.
Some, like the current Wales backs coach Mark Jones and his predecessor on the left wing in Canada the previous week, Chris Czekaj, were hampered by injury. Others found themselves forced into retirement, notably Warburton’s back row team-mate at the Cardiff Blues, Robin Sowden-Taylor.
Dafydd Jones, on the blindside of the back row in Bridgeview, and hooker Gareth Williams also fell foul of injury. Some, like Daniel Evans, Tom James, Andrew Bishop and Nicky Robinson, found their opportunities increasingly limited but nobody found himself frozen out of favour to the same extent as Dwayne Peel, still his country’s most-capped scrum-half but maybe not for much longer.
Peel has not been seen on the Test stage since making his 76th appearance for Wales, against France in Paris more than two years ago. His successor, Mike Phillips, will aim to equal Peel’s tally by the end of the autumn series.
The scene may have shifted from America to Asia but the challenge will be the same for McBryde as it was four years ago, a challenge underlined by fellow coach Shaun Edwards: “This is definitely a huge test for us.”
If it is huge for Wales, then imagine what it is for Japan. “They’re Six Nations champions and we’re ranked 15th in the world,” the Cherry Blossoms’ head coach, the irrepressible, Eddie Jones said. “All right, so they’re a missing a few because of the Lions but the last time Japan played Wales we lost 98-nil.
“I’d love to think that we could change the course of history. We’ve never beaten a top-ten ranked country and it would be an event of massive significance if we could manage it against Wales.”
Saturday’s opening skirmish takes place at a 30,000-seater stadium in Higashiosaka, an industrial town renowned as the site of one of Japan’s biggest railway companies.
It’s about as close to Osaka as Bridgeview is to Chicago, an unlikely venue for an uncapped young Welsh lad as unlikely as Warburton four years ago.
