Names and games

Six Jones boyos were picked for the Wales rugby union XV which played South Africa last Saturday — Adam, Dafydd, Duncan, Ryan, Stephen and Steve. BBC commentator Eddie Butler said the knack had been to identify them by their hair — ‘blond, dark or ginger’. Eddie’s a better man than me — five of them were in the scrum in which all eight of them seemed to be identical shaven-headed Magwitches auditioning for the scary Act 1 estuary scene in Great Expectations. Saturday’s six broke rugby’s record of surname surfeit, held since 1939 when a quintet named Davies took on Ireland in Belfast. Last week’s debutant, Ryan, was history’s 73rd Welsh rugby international called Jones. Wales’s moniker muster then follows: Davies 59, Williams 49, Evans 46, Thomas 40 — that’s not counting (rugger being rugger) two posh hooraying hyphens which, nicely, cap the list: T. Jones-Davies (capped 1930) and H.