Ioan Lloyd: Scarlets fly-half desperate for second Wales chance
- Published
Ioan Lloyd has played ten of Scarlets' 11 games so far this season
Scarlets fly-half Ioan Lloyd may be a Test player by right but admits the experience left him feeling hollow.
Wales was in the grip of the Covid pandemic when Lloyd, then just 19, got the nod to face Georgia in autumn 2020.
What should have been a dream debut struggled to live up to the occasion with little fanfare or fuss inside an empty Parc y Scarlets.
Three years later and he is back in Llanelli fighting to secure another "better" crack at Test rugby.
Lloyd will always remember the 18-0 win as the day he fulfilled his childhood ambition of playing for Wales, though it was hardly the moment he had played over time and again in his imagination.
There was no roar of the crowd, no rousing anthems nor spine-tingling atmosphere to ruffle the hairs on the back of the neck.
Instead it was the echoes of his team-mates inside an empty club ground as another lockdown loomed. Not even his parents there to watch, left to follow events on a mobile phone somewhere along the M4 motorway.
"It was very different to how I had always imagined getting my first cap would be," Lloyd told the Scrum V podcast.
"There was no-one there, not even my parents. In fact I think my mum watched the game on her phone in a layby off the motorway. My younger brother had appendix pain so had to go to hospital so my parents struggled to watch it.
"I remember driving home after the game, I opened the door, really excited with my Wales cap on - and no-one was home.
"In my head I've got a Wales cap and that was my dream. The situation [was] what it [was] and I'm very grateful for getting that chance but I do use it as motivation to have a better experience - as many times as possible."
Wales beat Georgia 18-0 at an empty Parc Y Scarlets in November 2020
Johnny Williams and Kieran Hardy, now his team-mates at Scarlets, were also given their Wales debuts that day by then coach Wayne Pivac, before Lloyd replaced Callum Sheedy to earn the cap.
Three years on, it could be those two players competing again for the number 10 jersey as Warren Gatland prepares to put faith in a new fly-half for the Six Nations.
"I want to play for Wales, that has always been the dream," said Lloyd, who won a second cap a week later.
"I haven't had any conversations and I haven't targeted the Six Nations, but I want to be involved as soon as possible. However, Scarlets has to be the main thing for me first."
Born and raised in Cardiff, Lloyd became Bristol's youngest ever Premiership player at 18 before returning to enhance his international ambitions in west Wales.
'He's box office'
Scarlets head coach Dwayne Peel played alongside plenty of world-class fly-halves in his time and has encouraged Lloyd to express his natural instincts.
"As a coach you're half watching the game with your hands over your head because you don't know what he's going to do next," said former Wales scrum-half Peel after Lloyd masterminded a win over Cardiff.
"But the other half of the time you are celebrating what he's doing because he's box office when he gets that space."
Lloyd, now 22, was inspired as a teenager by the exploits of another kaleidoscopic Welsh talent, James Hook, and particularly the running qualities of New Zealand rugby league star Shaun Johnson.
"I was rugby-obsessed as a kid. My ritual the night before playing was watching the same highlights videos over and over, especially Shaun Johnson," said Lloyd.
"I love the way he runs with the ball, his ability to create space from absolutely nothing. I haven't seen many other players like it."
Kicking on Christmas
Lloyd may have Wales ambitions but the concern is that mercurial talents have not always fitted into Gatland's gameplan.
That will not stop him spending a few hours on Christmas morning kicking a ball on the local park, a ritual he has done since childhood.
"My mother would buy me new boots or a ball and ask me, 'What's your closest rival doing this morning?'", said Lloyd who is preparing for a Boxing Day west Wales derby against Ospreys who beat Scarlets 31-9 in Swansea last month.
"I'm starting to understand the magnitude of the fixture against the Ospreys, how much it means to the team and whole community. It's the biggest game of the season.
"It's a big game for them as well. I had a taste of it down there a few weeks ago and we need to use that disappointment as motivation to put in a performance we're proud of."
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