Wales rugby star missed glitzy British Lions announcement due to delayed flight
The O2 Arena was hired as a venue and decked out in scarlet red, a live audience invited for the first time, a show put together featuring former players, Q&As, appearances from head coach Andy Farrell and chairman Ieuan Evans
The British & Irish Lions threw everything at the 2025 squad announcement. The O2 Arena was hired as a venue and decked out in scarlet red, a live audience invited for the first time, a show put together featuring former players, Q&As, appearances from head coach Andy Farrell and chairman Ieuan Evans, and the unveiling of 2025 Tour captain Maro Itoje.
To complement the occasion, dozens of players huddled around TV screens, waiting for news: some at home, some at their clubs' training ground, some even walking the dog, waiting to hear if they were about to realise their dream of becoming a British & Irish Lion.
Meanwhile, somewhere over South Africa's Gauteng province, Jac Morgan was 39,000 feet in the air, oblivious to what was going on below. A flight delay from Durban to Johannesburg, where he was on club duty with Ospreys, meant he missed all the drama and only discovered his fate when the plane safely touched ground.
Fortunately for him, loud applause erupted around the plane.
'I found out as soon as I landed,' he said. 'I was able to get my head down a little bit but soon after there was a lot of clapping and cheering, and everyone came up to me to congratulate me. It is a surreal thing to be picked for the Lions.'
Surreal, perhaps, but undoubtedly justified. And, after a rollercoaster journey that has taken him from an engineering apprenticeship to national captain within six short years, a fitting way to find out.
Speak to those who know Morgan best and they will tell you he has always had a mature head on young shoulders.
A quiet personality, he comes from Brynamman, a small village in the Brecon Beacons, where Welsh is the first language and started playing rugby at local club Cwmtwrch, where he stayed from under-8 to under-16 level.
Even then, some predicted he would reach the top.
'As the boys got a bit older, they'd like a crafty pint here and there, but not Jac. He was always on the water. He was so dedicated. He didn't drink beer,' Bertie Roberts, Cwmtwrch age-grade coach, told Rugby Pass.
Morgan then went on to play for Amman United Youth and the Scarlets academy, but he was released at 17 and joined Welsh Premiership team Aberavon. Mature and head-strong, he made contingency plans for a non-rugby career and enrolled on a mechanical engineering course, and worked as an apprentice for Morgan Advanced Materials in Swansea. Rugby remained his dream, however, and after making great strides at Aberavon, he was quickly parachuted into the Wales U20s set-up – leaving him with a dilemma.
'So the first year when I was playing for Wales Under-20s I was working all the afternoons and the evenings, it was quite hard,' he said. 'We went to Argentina for the Under-20s World Cup during the summer of 2019, and then around October time when the Under-20s started up again with a few training camps, I was weighing up if I could do it all again and combine both jobs.
'I spoke to the Scarlets academy manager, who was also the coach of the Under-20s, and I just asked him if I would be allowed to come into training if I finished work, and he said yes.
'So I decided that October to try and give the Under-20s a shot more than anything, then I joined up with the Scarlets again, and yeah, the rest is history. I think I made the right decision."
Morgan took the plunge. He quit his engineering job and threw himself at rugby again, with Scarlets swooping back in to sign him. He then captained Wales in their 2020 Six Nations U20s campaign, and was man of the match in the 23-22 upset win away to England. A senior debut soon followed but Scarlets released him again, and he ended up with Ospreys. He has not looked back since.
Wales have a strong history of creating world-class openside flankers. Martyn Williams, Sam Warburton and Justin Tuipuric have all shone in the No.7 jersey in the past 25 years, and many believe Morgan belongs in that company.
'I see him as a sort of Welsh version of the former Australia flanker George Smith,' former Wales teammate Scott Baldwin told Rugby Pass. 'It's a big comparison to make and Jac obviously has a long way to go, while what also marked George Smith out was the amount of time he spent at the highest level.
'I don't think he realises how good a player he could be.'
Morgan's Wales debut was a matter of when, not if. And he first earned selection for the 2022 Six Nations, playing from the start and completing all 80 minutes against Scotland.
'It's hard to explain the emotions that I felt while singing the anthem,' he said afterwards. 'I was nervous, my nerves were terrible whilst singing it and what with it being my home anthem and being a Welsh speaker I nearly forgot the words halfway through what with everyone being so loud.'
He'll be glad to know there is no anthem to learn this summer.
Morgan's introduction to Test match rugby was one of the highlights of an otherwise disappointing 2022 campaign for Wales. Head coach Wayne Pivac was replaced by the returning Warren Gatland, who spent 12 years in charge between 2007-2019, ahead of the 2023 World Cup. Gatland chose to look to the future and installed Morgan as a co-captain ahead of the tournament in France, just 18 months on from his debut.
"What I think Jac does brilliantly is he leads by example," said Wales prop Gareth Thomas in France. "Just in training, I was speaking to Mike (Forshaw) about it. He puts a tackle in and it makes me want to put a dominant tackle in. A lot of the boys feed off his example on the pitch. In that way he's been brilliant."
While Wales have struggled on the pitch for the past few years, Morgan has been a constant ray of light. Videos of the moment he realised he had earned Lions selection might have done the rounds on social media, but it's perhaps incomparable to the relief felt in the head offices at Principality Stadium.
Amid a torrid time for Welsh rugby, there were fears the national team's ineptitude might cost Morgan a place on the plane. And even though he made it, it's a stain on the nation's rugby reputation that – in a squad of 38 players – only two are Welsh, with scrum-half Tomos Williams the other selected.
It's a pitiful return for a nation that is perhaps most synonymous with the Lions.
Morgan, whose international career has cruelly overlapped with such a bleak era, is the one bright spot in a team at its lowest ever ebb and must be chomping at the bit to show how good he is in a squad of players at a similar level. Not that he's ever likely to admit that.
'He's an incredible player. He is a class bloke, very humble, and someone I love playing with and playing for. You always know he is going to give everything,' Wales teammate Dafydd Jenkins said.
'You always know he is going to be one of the best players on the pitch, whoever we are playing against. Having people like that does help the team forward. He is above everyone else. For me, he is the best seven in Britain at the moment.'
Morgan now has an excellent chance to prove it.
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