O’Gara primed for battle of the out-halves

IN A GAME awash with sub-plots, none will be more central to the story-line than the duel between Ronan O’Gara and Stephen Jones at the Millennium Stadium next Sunday.

Widely accepted as the two form out-halves in the northern hemisphere, both have profited enormously from the almost telepathic communication with their respective scrum-halves — Peter Stringer and Dwayne Peel.

While both are 29 years of age, Jones is nine months older, three inches taller and a stone and a half heavier than his Lions colleague of two years ago, but O’Gara has won eight more caps and scored 145 more points for his country.