Huw Jones hails 'brave' Garry Ringrose for withdrawing from Lions line-up with head injury

Irish Examiner

a day ago

Huw Jones paid tribute to Garry Ringrose, the man he replaced in the British & Irish Lions' victorious second-Test team, and his fellow centre's bravery to call a head injury on himself.
Jones and his Scotland midfield partner Sione Tuipulotu had started the series opener against Australia in Brisbane the previous Saturday and helped the Lions to a 27-9 win but head coach Andy Farrell had wanted to install the Irish centre pairing of Bundee Aki and Ringrose for the pivotal second Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground seven days later.
Farrell had told the players of his intentions, only for Ringrose to withdraw himself from the fray after the final major training session of the week last Thursday, citing a recurrence on the concussion symptoms which had forced him out of the first Test.
That opened the door for Jones to retain his place and start alongside Aki in an Irish-Scottish partnership and the Glasgow Warriors star chipped in with a crucial 38th minute try that helped reduce the Wallabies lead from 23-5 to 23-17 at half-time on route to a dramatic, last-gasp 29-26 victory which secured the series 2-0 with one Test to spare.
It made for quite the week in Melbourne for the outside centre, who had started it dealing with being dropped but he spoke of his admiration for Ringrose.
'Yes, pretty mental. It's obviously the initial disappointment of not being in the squad on the Tuesday, just internally,' Jones said.
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'Had a chat with Faz. I was gutted. I got over that and was ready to get behind the boys. And then on Thursday we trained and Garry to be fair to him said his head just wasn't right, I think he may have got a knock in the session went to the doctor. That's brave.
'I went and chatted to him afterwards and he was emotional. It's one of those... you think 'I'll be all right, I'll be all right'. But if it's bad, it's bad.
'I was gutted for him, because he deserved to play and I know he would have been unbelievable today. That's rugby, that's sport sometimes.
'Your head's very important, you only get one brain and all that. If he's felt the need to say that he was struggling, then fair play to him. I just hope that he gets over it very quickly.'
Jones added: 'So I got a nod after that session. I was ready to step in and luckily I'd run some of the plays on Tuesday, so I was ready to go and got the job done today.'
It took the Lions 79 minutes to get there, for Hugo Keenan to score the try that won the Test and a first Lions series since 2013 and Jones conceded the tourists had done it the hard way and had been made to pay for early indiscipline, conceding two tries during the 10-minute period when Tommy Freeman's yellow card had sent them down to 14 men.
Restored to their full complement on 33 minutes, the Lions delivered two powerful blows to the Australian lead, both excellent finishes from well-crafted build-up play, the first for Tom Curry, before Jones too his try with aplomb after quick ruck ball from Jamison Gibson-Park and a smart pass from Keenan, powering through two defenders to score on 38 minutes.
'They'd gone 18 points ahead. It was big of us to fight back and score those two tries before half-time. You know they're bringing line speed on the line, so a bit of footwork and you can try and beat someone, and I didn't have far to go,' the centre said.
'The atmosphere was incredible. We knew it would be more than last week in terms of their intensity, just the game as a whole, like the occasion, and we talked about it all week.
'I felt probably right at the beginning we were there and then we were our worst enemy for a time. It's a cliche, but I don't think we ever stopped believing, even at half-time. Even if we'd been further down, we still had that belief that we'd go on and win that.
'The bench that came on added so much energy. There were a few scrum penalties, the half-backs had us playing in the right areas. It was just down to good rugby and Hugo finishing at the end.
'We were knocking on the door for that last 10 minutes and then just managed to nail it in the last minute. So yeah, unbelievable.'