On the wall of Shaun Edwards' home in France sits a photo from a decade ago.
In it, the younger versions of Sam Warburton and Dan Lydiate hold the Triple Crown with pride. Alongside them, Shaun Edwards and a fresh-faced Taulupe Faletau grasp the Six Nations trophy.
For all bar Edwards, it is their first title. Maybe that is why the picture holds pride of place in Edwards' home now.
"The back-row is the bedrock of your defence so I always try to get a photo with them when we win something," he explains. "It's not a bad back-row, is it? You've got your tackler, jackaller and your ball-carrier. But Taulupe could absolutely do all three, to be fair."
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This weekend, Faletau will reach the milestone of 100 Test caps, 11 years since pulling on the red jersey of Wales for the first time. In that time, he has won Six Nations titles, reached a World Cup semi-final and toured Australia, New Zealand and South Africa with the Lions.
All the while, he has forged a reputation as one of the all-time greats of the Welsh game. A V8 engine in a Rolls Royce body, putting out fires all over the park with a touch of class and poise. And all of it done while keeping the number of words he utters to a minimum.
'Fancy a bit of tackling today, bro?'
To say he's a quiet genius is something of an understatement. Even the matter of his own personal milestone this week, 95 caps for Wales and a further five for the Lions, was met with typical restraint. In all honesty, Faletau didn't seem particularly aware of the achievement himself when it was pointed out to him.
"That doesn't surprise me," says former Dragons academy boss Will Thomas. "He's always been very laid back! When we first brought him into the office at the Dragons, Toby was staring at the floor the whole time. Afterwards, I said to Byron Hayward, who was my strength and conditioning coach, that I wasn't sure about him because of it. Obviously he had talent, but he was just so shy. But Byron said that was the Tongan way of showing you respect. Then it all fitted into place."
That distinct lack of words is a constant theme. George Tavner, Filton College's academy director when Faletau attended the college, called him a "humble young man, very quiet".
"He was popular with the players because he was such a good person," he added. "But I found it difficult to engage with conversations to begin with, but I got to know him well over those three years. He'd always be the last in the lunch queue or would be there to thank people when we went anywhere. He was just a great character."
"Low-key" and "low maintenance" are phrases which crop up a lot. Edwards notes he's a "laidback, cool guy" who you would have to encourage to air his opinions. Although, Edwards added: "I haven't coached him in a while though, mate!"
He isn't always that shy, though, as Wales team-mate Dan Biggar attests. "Very quiet," said the fly-half of Faletau. "But give him a beer and he's got a lot to say for himself! He wants to be captain, leader, coach, attack coach, defence coach - the whole works!
"I remember one campaign, he told Warren Gatland in the bar after one game that he wanted to be captain the next week. I think we'd just beaten Scotland and Taulupe was pestering him, saying 'I want to be captain, I want to be captain'. Come the meeting on Monday morning, Gats was asking if anyone had anything to say and no one did. Then he turned to Taulupe and asked: 'Anything, captain Faletau?' He'd gone quite shy by that point!
"The braveness had worn off a bit at that. But Gats went to him most meetings to ask if he had something to say. You'd rarely get much off him, but with a beer he was not shy in gunning for the captaincy!"
Maybe the trick was just knowing how to speak to him.
"I can't even take too much credit for it," admits Edwards. "A great coach, Wayne Bennett, once told me that you have to remember how young your players are and speak on their levels. I'd ask, 'fancy a bit of tackling today, bro?'
"'Yeah, I'll do some tackling,' was the reply. And that was it. That was my style of coaching with Toby. It's important to know your players, isn't it? You don't have to get too technical sometimes!"
Would other players receive the same treatment from Edwards?
"I'd say no," adds Biggar. "Shaun wasn't as relaxed with the rest of us as he was with Toby! That was his and Gats' biggest strength though, in fairness. They knew the players and what worked for the boys. He'd always single a few players out in training, Shaun. But I don't think Toby ever had that.
"On a Monday morning after a game, we'd always put defensive comments on the screen in front of everyone so they could all see. You'd be a bit nervous coming down in the morning to see what work-ons you had waiting for you. But Toby generally seemed to have good things said about him. He was basically good every week. He had very few rollickings off Shaun, which is a rarity!"
'F**k, we're going to lose him here'
A player of Faletau's undoubted class would have always made the grade. Growing up in the 'Tongan embassy' in Ebbw Vale, with the likes of dad Kuli, Josh Taumalolo and Fe’ao Vunipola (father of Billy and Mako) all plying their trade in Welsh rugby at the time, he was surrounded by the sport as a youngster.
Still, there were one or two little moments of fate that pushed him on the path to where he is now. The first is how he ended up at Filton College, where he won the St Joseph's Rugby Festival against a star-studded Millfield side that included future England internationals Henry Thomas, Jonathan Joseph and Mako Vunipola.
"It was a chance encounter," explains Tavner. "I was working at Filton College running the rugby academy. At the time, we were trying to recruit Mako Vunipola into the programme. Mako's dad was playing rugby with Toby's dad at Ebbw Vale. There was a bit of a Tongan community there. The irony was I met Toby when I found out Mako wouldn't be coming to us. He was going to Millfield.
"Mako's dad said 'unfortunately Mako won't be coming, but I've got another young man called Taulupe who would be interested. He'll be living with us in Bristol, so would you have a look?'"
Starting off as a lock, it didn't take long to realise his ability as a dynamic No. 8. Soon, he was moved to the back of the scrum and into the first team at the college.
"That was the big thing with him," adds Tavner. "He was never bothered where you put him and the standard it was at. He didn't overthink things and he just thrived in whatever. He did a few training sessions with Bristol, but they had a number of players in that position. I pushed hard for them to look at him, but there were English-qualified players on their radar."
Bristol's loss was the Dragons' gain, with ex-academy boss Thomas remarking that the English club ended up holding a post-mortem to work out how Faletau had slipped through their clutches. Meanwhile, the transition to the Dragons could have been smoother. The Dragons had looked at a young Faletau in the summer of 2008, but with their back-row cupboard stocked with James Thomas, Rhys Jenkins and Morgan Allen, the shy youngster didn't get much of a look-in.
"In his last game, we were winning comfortably against the Ospreys so I said let's bring Toby on," explains Thomas. "He was sat at the back of the stands. Some players when they haven't had a fair crack of the whip are pacing up and down the touchline to make sure you're in their eyeline. But he came on and made an impact straightaway."
That wouldn't be enough to earn him a place, but his luck would soon change in a bizarre twist of fate. A scouting trip for a future Osprey resulted in Faletau getting a second chance.
"It was a freezing cold Wednesday in January and virtually every college and school game was off," added Thomas. "But we got wind that Filton were playing Truro in the Daily Mail Cup and the game was on. So I said to my skills coach, Wayne Jones, let's go down and have a look at Hanno Dirksen. He was a player for Truro that Paul Turner had mentioned so we drove down there.
"I remember they had gas heaters to thaw out the pitch as it was rock solid. Most players were tip-toeing around the pitch, but Toby was diving around all over. He was a warrior. We didn't get Hanno that day, but we brought Toby into the academy."
Dirksen went to the Ospreys, but the Dragons got Faletau. However, both players could so easily have ended up in Swansea.
"We placed him at Cross Keys and he had a few good games against Neath and Swansea," continues Thomas. "Andrew Hore got wind that he hadn't got a contract with us and the Ospreys got Filo Tiatia and a few others to try convince him to join them. We heard that at the time and they'd already had Hanno off us, so I thought 'f**k, we're going to lose him here'. Mike Cuddy told me later on that he picked him up in his helicopter and we couldn't compete with that. I was a bit embarrassed of the offer we gave him. But to his credit, he told them he wanted to play for the Dragons."
Ironically, one of his early breakthrough appearances for the Dragons would come against the Ospreys. Even with a star-studded back-row to face in the tailend of the Galactico era, Faletau was unfazed.
"The day of the match, I brought him into the office at Filton and asked if he'd seen the Ospreys back-row," recalls Tavner. "Jerry Collins, Marty Holah and Ryan Jones. However, he said he was just excited to play. He wasn't a rugby statto or nause, he just loved the game. It didn't bother him who he was playing. That summed him up. Most kids would be focused on who they were playing and would know everything about them. He just worked on himself."
That's been the case ever since.
'What do you get if you cross a ballerina and a b*****d?'
Biggar hesitates for a second as he tries to pinpoint why Faletau is as good as he is. If only we were all privy to that information.
"What makes him so special? You know what, I don't think he thinks he is. The game looks easy for him. He never stresses, he never gets too down on things or too high. His humility is a massive part of his success.
"He never thinks he's above his station or even thinks he's one of the best No. 8s in the world. He'd never have that mindset himself. He still sees himself as an 18-year-old coming into the team and having to prove himself. That translates into the amount of work he puts in to stay at the top of the game.
"I think he genuinely thinks he's not as good as he is, so he thinks he has to put that work in to stay there or even improve. Having someone so good work so hard is very special for us. He's one of those guys who, as a coach, you can sleep easy the night before a game knowing he'll deliver an eight out of 10 performance every week."
It is a sentiment which long-time back-row partner Justin Tipuric shares. When it comes to pinning down his quality, the Wales captain muses: “I don’t think we’ve got enough time, really! If you speak to him, he’s like the worst player in the world!"
If you want to pinpoint it a little more accurately, a pithy piece of parody golf commentary from Alan Partridge back in the 1990s skewers quite a lot about sports reporting as a whole, but is also not a million miles away from what makes Faletau so special as a player:
"A friend of mine said recently: 'What do you get if you cross a ballerina and a b*****d?' - 'Ballesteros, was his answer'. I guess, if you analyse it, Seve combines the qualities of both those animals. He has the lithe sophistication and nimbleness of a ballerina, combined with the hard-nosed, ruthless thuggery of a b*****d."
Maybe he doesn't quite bring the "thuggery' of a b*****d", as Partridge states, but there is a work ethic that belies his classy nature. Watch him for 80 minutes and you'll find he is doing the grunt work with a sense of class: putting out fires, but in an effortless manner.
"I think people miss his work-rate most weeks, because he makes things look easy," says Biggar. "He does the hard work. I can't think of many players who have gone as long as he has and as well as he has in a red jersey. He makes the game look easy and smooth, while I make it look rough and ready! There's no doubt about that. But anything done well looks easy and effortless. That's the sign of a brilliant player."
As for the "lithe sophistication", his ability with ball in hand is plain for all to see. "He's one of the best all-round players I've ever come across," attests Edwards. "People talk about naturals but the reason they look natural is because they work hard to get there. His abilities to slide past defensive players is incredible.
"It was almost like he was covered in Vaseline. He used to slip out of and step out of tackles with his nimble footwork. He's one of those players who are hard to tackle. People used to ask why we'd miss more tackles when we played the All Blacks - probably because the players are harder to tackle! It's not too complicated!"
At the age of 32, Faletau is still producing world-class performances regardless of whatever else is going on. It is little wonder he is held in such high regard by all who have come across him.
Tellingly, Biggar remarks that were he a director of rugby with an unlimited pile of cash, Faletau would be high up on his wishlist. "God help us when he decides to call it a day," he adds. "He's been operating at such a high level for so long, he's a very difficult person to replace."
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