Sir Alex Ferguson once said of Ryan Giggs: “I remember the first time I saw him. He was 13 and just floated over the ground like a cocker spaniel chasing a piece of silver paper in the wind.”
Ospreys head coach Toby Booth doesn’t bother with such colourful imagery when describing the first time he set eyes on Joe Hawkins. But he was "this kid’s got a big future" impressed. Blown away, even.
Recalling the moment this week, he said: “I have a history of helping people become international rugby players from young ages. He’s the one, as soon as I saw him, I said: ‘He’ll be an international rugby player, without a doubt’, because of the way he thinks about the game, the way he prepares himself. His mentality is very much an international player’s mindset. And he has the talent to go with it."
Booth wasn’t wrong with his take on Hawkins, with the youngster winning his first Wales cap when Australia visited Cardiff at the end of November. He’s still only 20 and has made just six starts for the Ospreys, but he took to the international game as if to the manner born.
Almost every one of his 13 passes were smooth and crisp and team-mates were put into space, while he made ground as a carrier. There was one wobbly moment when Hawkins had to hurry an attempted clearance from his own 22, but, overall, he was calm and assured, an old head on young shoulders. You can usually tell how a player feels about his performance when he passes by the mixed zone after a game. Hawkins popped down for testing, still in his kit, but found time to acknowledge a reporter or two he knew and had a breezy air about him: his debut had gone well from a personal perspective.
Perhaps we shouldn't have been surprised. His maturity and leadership were to the fore in the summer when he skippered Wales to the final of the U20 Summer Series in Italy, nailing the decisive penalty with five minutes to play against the tournament hosts in the final group game, to secure his team a 23-20 win.
After the final whistle he gave an impressive on-pitch speech to his fellow players, telling them: “Boys, how good does that feel? All the work we’ve put in, the weeks building — coming out here and the weeks out here. We dug in against Georgia, we had to dig in again today, but it’s worth it and we did it for each other. And we can enjoy tonight when we go back to the hotel. We’ll come firing into that final next week, yeah?”
There was a chorus of approval from his fellow players.
Wales U20s coach Byron Hayward would go on to say: “What’s a world-class player in the under-20s? It’s a player who would get in any under-20s team in the world in his position. And Joe Hawkins is one of those.”
The Ospreys will not be expecting too much too soon from Hawkins, with the region conscious that he still has a lot of scope to improve as a player. But, potentially, they have in the youngster who attended Cwmtawe Comprehensive School and cut his rugby teeth with Pontardawe a player who could prove a shining light in their midfield for years.
“He’s nowhere near the finished article, he’d be the first to say that,” said Booth. “But you’ve seen the footage of him as Wales U20s captain. He talks very well and understands the big picture. He comes back from the tournament three days later and his dad’s filming him [training] on Twitter, because he wants to get better. He’s a very driven young man.
“It’ll be how we manage him. I don’t mean in minutes, but in relation to giving him enough challenge, enough support and enough recovery because he’s a special talent, for sure.”
Few would disagree.
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