The Scarlets have always been a refuge for romantics. A side who spawned Barry John, Phil Bennett and Carwyn James have long been known for their adventure and skill but, in a town that has produced tinplate for the past 71 years, success was also built on steel.
The Welsh region, who have followed last season’s Pro 12 title by reaching the quarter-finals of the European Champions Cup for the first time since 2007, have become a favourite with neutrals. They have a gung-ho attitude and handling skills evocative of a bygone era when the Welsh game was club-based and Llanelli were pre-eminent.
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The manner of the league success, winning away to Leinster in the semi-finals with a bedazzling display of off-loading, lines of running, support play and pace before running Munster into the ground in the Dublin final, led to the Scarlets coach, Wayne Pivac, and the attack coach, Stephen Jones, being tipped as successors to the current Wales management after next year’s World Cup.
Jones made more than 300 appearances for Llanelli and the Scarlets in a career that included 104 caps for Wales and six for the Lions. He was the fly-half in the three semi-finals the club and the region have contested, in 2000 when they lost to Northampton in extra time, in 2002 when Leicester pipped them with a late penalty and in 2007 when the Tigers prevailed by 16 points.
“I have special memories of Europe and special nights in Stradey (Park, Llanelli’s old ground),” said Jones before Friday’s quarter-final against La Rochelle at Parc-y-Scarlets, which sold out within 45 minutes of the 15,180 tickets going on sale. “It is wonderful to be involved in the knockout stage again, an experience which is special for players. It will be some occasion.”
The Scarlets were within three minutes of going out at the group stage. They had lost their first two matches, at Toulon and at home to Bath, and were trailing Treviso in Llanelli by seven points in the third. Two quick tries, the second from the length of the field, kept them alive and they finished with a rousing victory at Bath before meeting the force of Toulon head on.
“Our philosophy is to have a long attacking line and to move the ball,” Jones said. “We try to upskill every player here: you want your forwards to be comfortable in possession. It is a long process and you need to persevere. We lost our first three league matches last season but we were creating opportunities and, as the players became more comfortable with what we were trying to do, we started to take them.
“La Rochelle have a massive pack and they will be slightly different from what we are used to. We beat Toulon here, a victory that summed up the character of the group. They put their bodies on the line in a huge defensive set at the end. It is a lot easier to get excited on the ball than putting your head where it hurts and defence sums up a team’s culture. Byron Hayward is doing a superb job as defence coach: to be the best, you need to be strong in the set pieces and defence as well as attack.”
It will be the first time Parc-y-Scarlets has hosted a knock-out match in the Champions Cup. Llanelli made the quarter-finals in six of the first seven years of the tournament and did so again in 2004, the first year of regional rugby. After 2007 they failed to make it out of the group stage and between 2012 and the end of last season won six matches in 30.
The arrival of Pivac from New Zealand and Jones from Wasps, the club where he finished his playing career and took his first steps in coaching, was transformative. “I learned a lot at Wasps, a top club, but had always intended to return home at some point,” Jones said. “I cringe when I think about some of my first training sessions: coaching is different from playing not only in the greater amount of time it takes up but in the way you need to keep evolving.
“I was fortunate to play under some exceptional coaches like Graham Henry, Steve Hansen and Scott Johnson and have spoken to them all since I became a coach. At Llanelli we had Gareth Jenkins who tapped into the emotional side. I loved his attitude: he was someone who enjoyed what he did. I take inspiration from that.”
Jones was Wales’s fly-half in the grand slam winning side of 2005, a year when they played with a fizz and verve thought to have gone flat in the European game. “It was a great time,” he said. “I want the players here to have the same enjoyment in what they do and to aspire to reach the top, as many of them have. The laws are constantly tinkered with which can affect tactics. You have to win but we want the game played in a certain way. We still have a way to go but after a tough few years for the Welsh regions, things are on the up. We want to make a big day for Parc y Scarlets the first of many.”