AWJ out to climb his final mountain

FOR the last 17 winters, Alun Wyn Jones has been trying to find a way from Swansea to Mont Blanc and the summit of European club competition.

- PETER JACKSON

For each of those winters, he has wound up taking all sorts of dead-end routes in search of the Alpine nirvana. On the three occasions when his Ospreys managed to get as far as the foothills, they were knocked out at Vicarage Road, then Thomond Park; places not known for the scent of edelweiss nor the sight of snow-capped peaks.

Now, for the third time in as many weekends, Jones ventures into what looks dangerously like the latest in a series of last stands. After the losing Six Nations farewell in Paris and the winning one in Swansea last week against the obliging Dragons, nothing short of a victory as grand as any of his career will save the Welshman’s European road being shunted into another cul-de-sac.

Saracens in their own inhospitable corner of north London offer the Ospreys a long-overdue prospect of settling an old score, so old that when they last met on knock-out business the Farrell in Sarries’ midfield wasn’t the current captain of England but the future head coach of Grand Slam Ireland.

Fifteen years later, Jones remains the sole survivor from the starting line-up on April 6, 2008 when Glen Jackson did the kicking while Farrell, junior, was still at school. It can be seen in retrospect as the day when the protagonists took off in different directions. Saracens, through to their first semi-final, soared ever upwards. Seven more semis followed, the first five in successive seasons from 2012 to 2017.