Stage set for Henson to take a starring role

Gavin Henson

In all the unravelling of Sir Clive Woodward's strategy there is no doubt about the name - and the talent - that will most haunt him if redemption is denied the Lions tonight.

The breaking point of Woodward, the moment when his critics got their strongest sense of impending disaster, was when he announced his first test squad without the name of Gavin Henson. It seemed not so much a mistake as a monstrous oversight.

Henson may not have the turn of foot we imagine, not when it matters most, but he - and all those who believe they have seen in him an authentic flash of potential greatness - were maybe entitled to know a little sooner than this desperate 11th hour.

This conviction could only be enhanced this week when you went from the room in the Wellington hotel where Woodward admitted that he had got quite a number of things wrong, and found his principal victim, Henson, looking so relaxed he might have already been between the posts.

Said 23-year-old Henson: "Pressure? I don't really understand pressure - not when I'm playing a match. Yes, it's a massive game [tonight] but the only time I feel nerves is maybe on the training field ... Say I'm kicking goals [no doubt from improbable distances] and am going for five out of five, and I've done four ... well I might feel a few nerves then, but that's it."

Like so many aspects of Henson's celebrated young life, there are hints of contradiction even in this statement of massive confidence. The legend is already established that he beat the English in Cardiff this year with a howitzer kick that was put over almost as a formality.

But then there is a belief that his senior colleague, Stephen Jones, doubtful about his own range, gave Henson no option after he had earlier declined the chance of taking a long penalty.

But the idea of Henson the natural, the free spirit soaring above the concerns of the obsessive Jonny Wilkinson, who claimed what the Welshman considered to be his natural place at No 12 in the first test, was certainly encouraged in the first hours after Woodward's about-turn.

Wilkinson is the first to admit: "We are completely different people. He [Henson] tells me as soon as a game is over it is forgotten. He is thinking of the next one. I analyse everything that has happened."

For the moment, Henson is more than anything an idea, a hope, rather than a reality, but if ever a team needed such an injection of self-belief it is surely these no-hope Lions.

There is still much debate about how Henson handled the shock of his exclusion from the first test. Some say he went on a rampage of regret. Others claim he was a model of reflection and calm, simply packing his boots and playing the mid-week game with a cold determination to highlight the error of his coach's decision.

With his gelled hair and brooding eyes, and a curl of the lip worthy of Elvis Presley, one belief is that his self-preoccupation can veer towards the absolute, but then it is perhaps not a disqualifying mark against his prospects of becoming a great performer.

Plainly, there is a thirst for the action and the centre of attention. He sat in the corner of the hotel and said that he wished the game that could easily prove the most important of his life was happening in an hour, not because he saw it as a defining phase of his young career but just because he wanted to play, wanted to feel the expectancy of the big crowd - and his own.

"I don't build any game into a massive thing," he said. "In one way all the games are very similar to me. They don't create nerves, only the excitement of playing, though I have to say it's nice this week to get the feeling that people have wanted to see me in the team ... I've been told this quite a bit, and that tells me I have been doing something right."

There it was, a hint of that petulance which was said to have sent doors crashing and provoked talk of the possibility of his angry departure from the squad.

"I certainly didn't hide the fact that I was disappointed. Of course I was disappointed," he said. "I believe in my ability and I came here to play. But I think I have showed the right attitude. I'm an honest person."

Henson said, and with no impression that he might see himself as the junior partner, that he would be having a word with Wilkinson before the test.

He said it with a nonchalance that inevitably reminded you of another young Welshmen who came to this country with plans of personal conquest, and pulled them off beyond almost everyone's dreams but his own.

It was Barry John in 1971 - the only time the Lions beat the All Blacks in a series - and his partner was that halfback legend, Gareth Edwards. The senior man asked the new arrival how he liked the ball to be delivered. John said: "Gareth, you just throw it - I'll catch it."

Given all of Wilkinson's trials since his supreme, World Cup-winning moment when he dropped the goal that beat Australia, and the compulsive concentration on detail that has marked his game, it is no surprise that he approaches tonight's test in a mood contrasting so sharply with that of his new team-mate.

"I have a certain feeling in the pit of my stomach as I approach a game," Wilkinson said. "Gavin seems to enjoy all of it."

For Henson it is his first great trial and for Woodward, maybe, the last. Only one thing is certain. Whatever happens, their names will always be linked - whether it will be in sorrow or in joy.

- INDEPENDENT