IT WAS always on the cards that professional rugby players earning six figure salaries would be expected to live up to impossible standards, yet Robert Howley is one of the happy few who appear to have managed the exacting standards of the modern game with no perceptible sense of strain.

The Cardiff, Wales and Lions scrumhalf is widely regarded as being worth every penny of the £120,000 a year he reputedly earns from his distinctive work for club and country.

When Howley takes the field against Western Province at Newlands today, the Lions management will fervently hope that the forwards present him with the quality ball that will allow his multifaceted skills to flourish.

It is hardly an exaggeration to say the 26 year old Welshman is one of a tiny handful of Lions who will make the crucial difference between success and failure in next month's Test series against the Springboks. Some of Howley's compatriots believe he is the most complete scrumhalf Wales has produced since Gareth Edwards, but that parochial assessment pales into insignificance once one considers the heavy responsibility he shoulders for the Lions, who have everything to prove against the nation that won the 1995 World Cup.

If the Lions mean to catch fire at Newlands - and elsewhere - they must harness Howley's unique vision and athleticism to a game plan that celebrates instinct and movement above all else.

Howley has no illusions about the overriding cultural role of rugby in South Africa, which devotes huge financial resources to the production of world class players. "You notice the extra power and strength of their forwards immediately - and then you realise those qualities are present not just from numbers one to eight, but from numbers one right through to 15," he said.

"The pace of the game here is appreciably sharper and in important ways, the laws are interpreted differently - those are the main challenges the Lions have to confront."

While Fran Cotton, the Lions manager, poohpoohs any talk of a shadow Test team at this stage of the tour, it is patently obvious that Howley has been paired with Scotland's Gregor Townsend for the second successive Saturday in order to groove their partnership for the bigger battles to come.

"Before coming out here, I had only played with Gregor for the Barbarians, who picked him at centre," admitted Howley. "But I won't have any problem playing with such a great player at number 10 - we've already put a lot of work in and in any case, there isn't too much time to think about it with a lot of big matches coming up quickly.

No doubt the Lions selectors had noted Howley's enjoyment whenever he performed in tandem with another off the cuff playmaker, Arwel Thomas, whose intuitive gifts bear comparison with Townsend's.

"I think every side has to have someone who supplies the spark and I'm delighted to get the chance to work with that kind of player," said Howley of Townsend.

Not surprisingly, Howley is in complete sympathy with coach Ian McGeechan's policy of encouraging the natural footballers in the squad to express themselves within a context of controlled risk. That is why the Welsh scrumhalf will have to find ways to fashion the bullets for the two veteran three quarters, Jeremy Guscott and Ieuan Evans, to show they can make fresh waves among the Springboks on their third Lions tour.

"If you go on the field for 80 minutes and don't take a decision and simply keep moving the bail on, then you haven't taken any risks," explained Howley. "In a pressure situation the refusal to take a decision means the pressure quickly multiplies, especially when you come up against South African, sides. The more decision makers you have available, the better it is for the team."

Howley, who learned his trade as a number nine with Bridgend, had to be patient for much of the 1990s until Wales finally gave him his first cap last year when he was 25. Now that he has been chosen for the Lions it would be easy to assume Howley has reached the peak of his career, yet he insists the best has yet to come. "I've worked hard in my fitness and I'm enjoying my rugby, so hopefully I have more to give to the Lions.