When Ioan Lloyd was a small boy, he knew what he wanted to be when he grew up.

 

“I wanted to be James Hook,” he says. “I had pictures of him all over my bedroom wall.

 

“There were three big posters – part of a skills series. One was kicking out of hand, the other was kicking off a tee, and the third was maybe for drop-kicks, I think.

 

“Everyone has someone they look up to when they’re a kid. For me, it was James Hook. I just loved watching him play.

 

“The way I’d describe it, he just used to glide across the pitch. He had an eye for a gap and that famous James Hook dummy as well.”

 

As Lloyd talks of his schoolboy hero, a smile breaks across his face, the memories of all that poster-love still recent enough to be just a little embarrassing.

 

He is sitting in a suite at Parc y Scarlets, just along from the Phil Bennett Lounge, named after one of Lloyd’s more illustrious predecessors who wore the fabled No.10 shirt for both the Scarlets and for Wales.

 

Even when Bennett was in his genius-infused prime, there was occasional debate over who should or shouldn’t wear that revered number. Was Bennett really good enough to take over from Barry John? What about the later challenges of John Bevan, David Richards and Gareth Davies?

 

Years on, it was Neil Jenkins or Arwel Thomas. Then, Stephen Jones or Hook and most recently the shirt has been fought over by Dan Biggar and Gareth Anscombe.

 

But with the 2024 Six Nations just around the corner, the fly-half field is more wide open than it has been for years. Biggar has retired from Test rugby, Anscombe is unavailable due to injury, while Sam Costelow – considered the most likely heir – is also crocked.

 

That leaves Lloyd – with two caps to his name – no more of a risk or certainty than any other candidate, such as Bristol’s Callum Sheedy, Cardiff’s scrum-half Tomos Williams and the Dragons’ Will Reed.

 

Lloyd’s two caps came three years ago, when he was only 19 and still playing for Bristol.

 

It was during the Covid lockdowns, played at an empty and eerie Parc y Scarlets, and it would not have felt less like most players imagine their Wales debut to be had it been played on the surface of the moon.

 

He may have broken through at Bristol, but Lloyd is a Cardiff boy, who learned the game on the fields of Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Glantaf and played for CRICC, the Welsh medium club in the capital, where running rugby is as much of a fundamental buy-in as the language.

 

Hardly a surprise, then, that Lloyd – like Hook before him – would be the romantic’s choice to wear No.10 for Wales this season, even if he ends up not being Warren Gatland’s.

 

His instinct is to run and pass and kick only as a last resort, a style, he says, that was encouraged when he was on the rise and has yet to be kicked out of him.

 

“My school, Glantaf, was very big on running rugby,” says the fly-half who was asked to be part of the school’s shirt presentation the night before they played in the final of the Welsh Schools and Colleges Cup competition at the Principality Stadium last month.

 

“It was about throwing the ball about and having fun on the field. It was the same when I played at CRICC, which is pretty much a Glantaf offspring. You really had no choice but to play in that open style, but it was the way we all wanted to play, anyway.

 

“I wasn’t the showman of those school teams, either. We had some unbelievable players, some who don’t even play now. Some just drifted out of the game, or play at other levels. I suppose it’s just the luck of the draw.”

 

When he was 16, Lloyd left Glantaf to go to Clifton College – a private school in Bristol – before he joined the academy at Bristol Bears.

 

He still had a thing for Hook, but now other role-models had caught his eye, including one from New Zealand rugby league and another from Fiji who would go on to become a teammate at the Bears.

 

The Kiwi rugby league star he would devote plenty of TV-watching time to was Shaun Johnson, who used to strut his stuff for the New Zealand Warriors.

 

Johnson was a maverick, a player who would make his opponents look silly as he stepped, surged and floated past them.

 

One former rival memorably said: “It’s like playing on skates. You can’t change direction quickly enough.”

 

Lloyd was besotted with Johnson’s footwork, the way no-one could read where he was going.

 

“The try he scored against England in the semi-final of the Rugby League World Cup – I love that try. He takes the ball, with not much on, but goes outside one tackle and then just kicks out and steps another guy and suddenly he’s under the sticks.

 

“I’d never really seen anyone do that before, score like that. It just looked incredible.

 

“I like the players who mesmerise you. With Semi Radradra at Bristol, it was his ability to find a narrow gap and go through that gap. It’s incredible.”

 

The question is, having tried to play with the same swagger and self-belief in his own footwork through schools, then club and now regional rugby, could Lloyd bring the same attitude to playing at No.10 for Wales?

 

With so many changes in the likely Six Nations team, will it pay to be bold or will Gatland take some convincing, just as he took some convincing with Scotland’s Finn Russell for the British and Irish Lions.

 

“There is a balance to be found,” says Lloyd, who was used in various positions, including wing and full-back at Bristol, but was clear when he joined the Scarlets he wanted to be their No.10.

 

“When you are very young, you get away with things a bit more but at the higher levels you have to understand the repercussions when you make mistakes or unforced errors.

 

“I was lucky at Bristol. I had people there who wanted me to take risks and they accepted sometimes things wouldn’t pay off. That went for the whole team and there is the same attitude here at the Scarlets.

 

“Of course, I would love to play my game for Wales. To get into that squad is the ultimate dream. But I also have short term goals and to be honest, I have to concentrate on those and take it week-by-week with the Scarlets.

 

“If anything more comes, then it will come from my success and performances with this team.”

 

It will soon be 17 years since Hook first glided across a pitch for Wales and eight years since his international farewell.

 

These days, Hook is part of the coaching team at the Ospreys, although, strangely, Lloyd says he has never actually met his old hero.

 

The posters on Lloyd’s childhood bedroom wall may have long gone, but the dreams they sparked live on.

 

By Graham Thomas