Alun Wyn Jones could make shock return to Lions squad

Alun Wyn Jones has returned to training with Wales, boosting his chances of making a shock return to the British & Irish Lions.

The lock dislocated his shoulder seven minutes into the Lions‘ first match against Japan on June 26, and was replaced by Conor Murray as tour captain.

But the 35-year-old is on a path to a ‘remarkable recovery’ as Lions head coach Warren Gatland confirmed Jones is making steady progress.

“A few weeks ago we didn’t think it was an option,” said Gatland. “He has been back fully training with Wales – he is training this week with them – he is doing a double session with them and we’ll just see what the outcome of that is.

“He has made a remarkable recovery in terms of that injury, which wasn’t as bad as they first thought. That’s a real positive and it would be a boost to the squad having someone of his experience and calibre to come back into the squad.”

Jones is one Test away from reaching ten caps for the Lions, a feat accomplished by only seven players.

Gatland will make the call on whether to have Jones fly out to South Africa on Tuesday, with Wales holding a double training session.

The Lions have had a number of injuries to deal with in recent days on top of a number of players and management staff testing positive for Covid-19.

Trouble has been brewing among fly-half options with Owen Farrell nursing an abdominal injury and Finn Russell receiving treatment on an Achilles problem. This led to Marcus Smith being called up as cover on Saturday while on the pitch playing for England against Canada.

Elliot Daly’s chances of starting the first Test in the centre have also become more likely after impressing against the Sharks, and with Robbie Henshaw still yet to play a game in South Africa after sustaining a ‘mild’ hamstring injury.

Meanwhile, Maro Itoje has spoken out about the racist abuse received by a number of England’s football players following their Euro 2020 final defeat to Italy.

Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka missed penalties and have all been targeted on social media.

“It’s just incredibly sad to hear, sad to see, it’s sad that we have to have this conversation in 2021,” he said. “This is a large amount of the reason why so much talk is done about racism in sport because these incidents happen on a semi-regular basis.

“It’s become cliche to say this but we need to do more. We need to do more to tackle it, we need to do more to get these types of people out of stadiums, we need to do more to tackle this type of football culture that ruins it for a large amount of people.”