Peter Jackson: Hair Bear goes on the endangered species list

At close of business on Friday, Adam Jones had spent another week out of work without a club to call his own. In a matter of six months, the Wales tighthead has been heading the way of the Celtic Tiger – not quite from boom to bust but from his country's most valuable player to standing on the outside looking in. How did it come to this?
Why has a man acknowledged not so long ago as a national treasure of the grunt-‘n'-groan trade apparently been reduced, in a financial sense, to somewhere in the region (no pun intended) of half the player he used to be?
The chain of events which have conspired to leave Jones feeling like a prophet without honour in his own land can be traced back to the Welsh Rugby Union and their decision to go into the business of signing players. They saw themselves as saviours, others now see them as interfering busybodies.
Their move coincided with the refusal of the four regional teams to meet the New Year's Eve deadline set for re-signing their ‘Participation Agreement' with the Union.     Like shining knights on white horses, the governing body were riding to the rescue to prevent out-of-contract international players joining the exodus from Wales.
“The overarching strategy of the WRU is to keep as many international players under contract in Wales with our four Regions as possible,” they said. “In order to achieve that aim the WRU encourages the four Regions to contract as many key players as they can under direct contracts.
“If any Region cannot agree terms with a key international player the WRU will be prepared to negotiate a national contract with the individual in order to keep them in Wales as the WRU did with Sam Warburton.”
All jolly good altruistic stuff except that in a poisoned climate of mutual hostility, it did not take the Regions long to accuse the Union of competing against them in the market and upping the ante.
Six months after landing Warburton, the captain is still confined to a one-man stable. Four of the five others who were supposed to have joined him made different decisions.
Leigh Halfpenny opted for Toulon and the riches of £600,000-a-year. Alun-Wyn Jones underlined his abiding loyalty to the Ospreys by staying in Swansea when he could have cashed in his pommes frites with a French club.
In January the WRU said they had “encouraged the Scarlets and the Ospreys to conclude negotiations with Scott Williams, Rhys Priestland and Adam Jones respectively.”
The Scarlets duly did so with Priestland and Williams. The Ospreys made Jones an offer and subsequently accused the WRU of competing against them by making the same player a bigger offer which, they say, undermined their attempt to keep him.
“We offered Adam £250,000-a-year back in January for the coming season,” an Ospreys official said. “The Union then offered him £330,000. We couldn't commit to that level.”
Concerned at the stalling effect the Union's offer had on their negotiations, the Ospreys raised the subject with WRU chief executive Roger Lewis. They were assured that the Union would not enter into a “bidding war”.
As a centrally-contracted player, Jones would be loaned back to the Ospreys free of charge for a limited number of matches.   The Union stressed the need for the matter to be brought to a swift conclusion and that was back in mid-February.
Since then they have maintained a deafening silence, interrupted just once after Ospreys chief executive Andrew Hore spoke out about the Union's bid. “Adam Jones has been a faithful servant of Welsh rugby and continues to be a world-class player,” the WRU said in a statement. “It's important we all work to ensure he continues his rugby career in Wales.”
Not for the first time, a Union statement raises more questions than it answers.   Faithful servant and world-class player he may be but what has happened to the Union offer? Has it been withdrawn? If so, did they take that decision before or after Jones' fall from grace in South Africa?
Other facts can be revealed. The Dragons offered Jones circa £220,000-year towards the end of the season and when some weeks had gone by without a decision, they gave him a 24-hour deadline.
Jones declined and the Dragons have since imported a tighthead from South Africa, James ‘Brok' Harris from the Stormers. Warren Gatland has never gone big on sentiment, as Brian O'Driscoll will testify, and if the Wales head coach has decreed that Jones is no longer worth a central contract, then why don't the WRU say so?
While form and fitness can make a mockery of the most honourable of intentions, their offer to Jones, designed to keep him in Wales, would appear to have had the opposite effect given the abortive counter offers from the Dragons.
Bristol's proposal to sign him for the English Championship play-offs and sub-contract him to Sale has collapsed, as revealed here last week. Toulon have signed him on a pre-contract basis for a post-World Cup move which will not count for much if Wales have by then cast him out.
Friends say Jones is “confused and disillusioned, wondering where the next offer is coming from”. Former fellow Osprey Ryan Jones describes his namesake's predicament as “tragic”. It is, of course, nothing of the sort because nobody has died but you get the drift.
“That's the human side of all this,” Ryan says. “Hundreds of people are directly affected by what goes on behind closed doors. Adam's a national hero and an icon and yet he's currently without a contract.”
While his issues over the modified scrum-engagement have been well documented, another factor has been overlooked. Jonathan Humphreys made Jones the best in the business as Ospreys' forwards coach before leaving to do the same job for Scotland since when The Hair Bear has become an endangered species.
*This article was first published in The Rugby Paper on July 27.