ALUN WYN JONES has told Warren Gatland that he still hopes he can recover in time to play in this summer’s Lions tour to South Africa.

The Wales and Lions captain injured his shoulder after just seven minutes of the Lions’ game against Japan last weekend. But despite being ruled out of the tour, Jones has not given up on making it back in time to feature in the series.

“Given his age, they think that they could potentially take a few shortcuts, more than you would do with a young player, if he picked up this type of injury at the start of his career,” Gatland said.

“He’s kind of optimistic that a miracle may happen, and then he can get himself right. We’re just going to assess it and see how the next couple of weeks goes. I think the specialist said, when he had to look at it, that it wasn’t quite as bad as he thought it would be.

“But not good enough, obviously, to come on tour to start with, and, and we needed a replacement otherwise we would have put too much pressure on him and the other second rows.

“We’re going to monitor that and as we come towards the end of the tour, or if we pick up an injury and he’s making amazing progress, something can happen – you never know. So it’s kind of one of those just wait and see situations.”