Famous American author and political activist Helen Keller once said "optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence".
She didn't have Welsh rugby in mind when she uttered that phrase but new Wales U20s head coach Mark Jones may as well have taken a leaf out of her book. There is a lot of doom and gloom surrounding Welsh rugby at the moment, especially at age-grade level, with Wales U20s suffering the ignominy of a Six Nations whitewash just a few short months ago.
They head off to the Junior World Championships in South Africa in a couple of weeks, and considering they have powerhouses France and New Zealand in their pool, along with a dangerous Japan side, there aren't many who are giving Wales a cat's chance in hell of making an impact in the Rainbow Nation.
But Jones is the eternal optimist, and after replacing Byron Hayward last month the former Wales wing is confident his young charges can upset the odds.
"When I got a call from [interim WRU performance director] Huw [Bevan] about this job I thought, you know what, I feel I can help this group a little bit at the World Cup," said Jones.
"I didn't want them to go there under-prepared. I wanted to make sure they go there and get themselves in a position where they can do themselves proud, and hopefully as a result do the country proud.
"We've looked back at the Six Nations; the things that went well, and some of the things where there's a real opportunity to make that better. We've gone after those areas hard for the last three and a half weeks, but of course, you can't fix everything all at once.
"I'm confident as a group of players they'll be able to park the Six Nations emotionally, and just look at this as a one-off opportunity to put our best game on the field, and try to show how much they've improved in this space of time.
"I think that's going to be the measure of us. Have we improved? Are we better as individuals, and does the team look like it's going in the right direction? We'll find that out because we are playing the All Blacks, we are playing Japan, and we are playing France. There's no better yardstick for us than playing those three teams."
One area where Wales struggled throughout the U20s Six Nations was in the front five, finding it difficult to physically match sides with bigger and heavier packs than themselves. Wales will soon be coming up against packs with far greater size and physical attributes once again, especially in the front five, but Jones is a smart coach, and is well aware there's more than one way to skin a cat.
"If you look at our back-row we've got some really good athletes who I think could be a real nuisance for teams," he said. "I think they'll look at those players and go, 'they were a real nightmare'. And then up front, in the front five, I think we've got a lot of young men there that have got a huge amount of growth in them.
"If they get coached really well over the next few years, their effort levels are very high and they're picking up information really well at the moment. I've got a lot of optimism for those guys because front-five forwards are a longer cake to cook, aren't they?
"If these players can get coached really well over the next period of time, I think that you'll be surprised how many of them might come through to the regional game.
"I liken it a little bit to the big kid when you in the under-10s who sort of runs around with the other kids and they dominate in the game and they're influencing the game because of their physical attributes. And there's no real talent in those physical attributes. It's literally the parents and God decided that they were going to be that size and that fast and that skilful at that age. But I think what happens over time, a lot of the time, is the other kids develop other ways to cope with those big kids, don't they? They develop or might need to go low on this guy. And over a period of three or four years, their skill development accelerates and it takes a lot longer to get the results of your work.
"You can probably bulk somebody up and get them fit in about two or three months, but technically, to teach somebody to carry well at a certain height, pass the ball well, offload well, takes time. But at the end of the day, we're trying to get these players ready to win World Cups, Six Nations with the national team, and Heineken Cups with their regional teams.
"So, we've got a bit more time to get them through, but that's not going to help us in this tournament. So, I think what we've tried to do is get our front five with a clear purpose, what their role is within this tournament for the team."
Having gone straight from retirement to coaching the Scarlets backs some 10 years ago, which also included a brief Six Nations-winning stint as attack coach of the men's national side, Jones has picked up a huge amount of experience at Rotherham, RGC, the Crusaders, Namibia and Worcester Warriors.
While it is his time working alongside future New Zealand head coach Scott Robertson at Super Rugby-winning outfit the Crusaders which intrigues people the most, Jones insists his experiences working in a number of different environments will benefit him in the long run.
"I've been blessed with the opportunities I've had in rugby," he said. "I really enjoyed my time at the Scarlets to begin with, and took a huge amount of learning out of that because I went from playing to coaching pretty much overnight.
"So, whilst I could coach technically and tactically, because I'd just finished playing, I was very in tune with what the game looked like [but] I probably hadn't found out the way I wanted to coach, how I wanted to interact with people, and my philosophy in terms of getting my points across to players.
"I think sometimes when you come through a pathway as a player or as a coach, you can play around with things, you can try things knowing that the consequence will be a loss, but actually it's probably not going to cost you your job, it won't cost you your place in the team.
"I think some experiences I've had there around north Wales, spending three years up there was really good, while I had a year in Rotherham, which was a very big learning curve for me, probably off the field as much as on it around managing a pro team.
"But I learned a lot going to the World Cup with Namibia, playing against South Africa and New Zealand in the group and being 10-9 down against New Zealand at 34 minutes or whatever it was, and thinking, 'is there going to be some sort of monsoon now that can cancel the game when this result will stand?'
"It was amazing going to New Zealand to help coach the most successful club team in the world, and trying to continue that legacy with that group - not trying to upset the apple cart, but also understanding that they'd had quite a heavy turnover in players of experienced players that year. Kieran Reed, Matt Todd, Ryan Crotty and Israel Dagg. I learned a lot from those guys and to be fair to them they were really open around my input, around seeing the game differently from a different hemisphere.
"But I think what I'm getting to, I suppose, is I'm just still looking to get better all the time, and the fact this is a bit more of a head coach's role was really appealing."
Let's hope Jones' optimism and his experiences can rub off on this Wales U20s side.
Wales U20s face New Zealand on June 24, Japan on June 29 and France on July 4.
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