Wales captain Ryan Jones holds the Six Nations trophy© AFP PHOTO/ADRIAN DENNIS

He's 34 and has had a succession of injuries. No retirement comes as a surprise after that, and as the man himself said: "If someone had told me 20 years ago that I was going to achieve and experience a fraction of what I have, then I would have been over the moon."

There's still a genuine sense of sadness at Ryan Jones's retirement. As a fellow rugby scribe, not a Welshman, said when the news broke: "You'd have hoped he would have had a couple more years."

Instead we say goodbye to somebody who was not only a very fine player - with 75 caps for Wales including 33 as captain, plus a full Lions test series - but the consummate team man.

The best days on the field came, it can be argued, in the first half of his Wales career. There was the part played in Grand Slams as a novice in 2005 - when his ability to cross gainlines combined with Michael Owen's ball skills and Martyn Williams' speed in support and at the breakdown gave Wales a fluency rarely matched since - and as captain in 2008. That first year also saw him go on the Lions tour as a replacement and force his way into the Test team for all three matches against the All Blacks.

Yet nothing in that long career was more impressive than his last two years in the Six Nations, 2012 and 2013. By then he had lost the captaincy, ruthlessly axed by Warren Gatland in the wake of an insipid draw against Fiji in November 2010. He was no longer a first choice and had been on the margins at the 2011 World Cup, but his role in campaigns which brought a Grand Slam followed by a Championship - Wales's first consecutive titles since 1979 - was fundamental.

The sequence of his contributions in 2012 speaks volumes - blind side, lock and captain, replacement lock, replacement No.8, replacement open side. In 2013 he was captain in the three matches which saw Wales on a steady upward curve from the opening defeat against Ireland, only to be injured before the decider against England.It is a record which speaks of a man who was not only an accomplished, versatile all-round forward but prepared to take on any role his country asked.

If rugby had an equivalent of basketball's Sixth Man award - given to the player who makes the greatest contribution in spite of not being an automatic starter - he would have been a shoo-in in 2012 and a serious contender a year later.

There had been a slight sense of surprise when he was elevated to the leadership in 2008 in one of the first and best decisions of Warren Gatland's tenure. He had, like Chris Robshaw - who echoes his combination of the ferocious competitiveness of the top-class sportsman with evident decency and an absence of egotism - the advantage of not being tainted by involvement in a shambolic World Cup campaign immediately before his appointment.

Gatland also recognised qualities evident on the first occasion I encountered Ryan, in an improvised BBC studio at the Angel Hotel, Cardiff during a period when he was out of the team injured. He was a revelation - articulate, perceptive, good-humoured and utterly lacking in self-importance.

He was proud of leading his country, but did not allow the role to define him or distort his ego. A few years ago a friend, not a rugby fan, returned from a trip to Wales explaining that she had met a near neighbour of the relatives she had been visiting.

"He's a really nice guy and said he was a rugby player. Ryan Jones, do you know anything about him?" she asked. That he was not just 'a rugby player', but the incumbent captain of Wales had never entered into the conversation.

That articulacy served him well in the media duties which come with captaincy. Win or lose, he would front up to the press and be patient, thoughtful and rational. The one occasion he seemed lost for words was after the Ospreys' devastating 29-28 Heineken Cup quarter-final loss to Biarritz - the closest his perennially exasperating regional franchise ever came to a European breakthrough - in 2010. To see him evidently close to tears was to realise how much that defeat, after playing the bulk of the rugby and scoring three tries to two [the first by himself], hurt.

Bristol knew what they were doing, acquiring not only a good player but an immensely positive influence, when they signed him in 2014. It was their misfortune that injuries minimised his contribution to the biggest games - those in which his influence might have been greatest - in both seasons and have now forced his retirement.

Not only fame but perceptiveness and articulacy should fit him for a media role, should he want it. Whatever direction he takes post-retirement, he'll take the deserved good wishes not only of Wales, but of most people of all nations he has encountered during a fine career.