Josh Adams was not the first player to cry during the anthem on his international debut but it was a memorable example of Welsh tears. Here was a young wing welling up during Land of My Fathers, a place he had to leave to wear the red jersey.
Tomorrow evening Adams will don a different red jersey in a Test, replacing Anthony Watson. Adams scored eight tries in the first three matches of the British & Irish Lions tour, although given that the touring backs were strangers to the ball in last weekend’s defeat, his all-round solidity has brought his return.
Tries are the currency of a wing and Adams, 26, has 17 in 32 Tests, but he is no one-trick finisher: he has played full back for Worcester Warriors — and for the Lions against Cell C Sharks — and has filled in at outside centre for Wales.
The ability to create tries means Adams can have a say on the series decider but the crux of the recall is down to his proficiency under the high ball, alongside Liam Williams, the other recalled Welshman at full back. Adams may not be the scariest or fastest wing, but he works hard and does everything well. Sam Vesty, the former England back, would “hammer on” to Adams at Worcester, Adams’s club from 2015 to 2019, about doing extra individual work on kicking and catching high balls.
“A lot of young lads these days become good at rugby but they don’t really follow rugby,” says Mark Hewitt, the former academy manager at Worcester. “Josh could tell you who played international rugby back in such and such, who’s playing here, who’s playing there. Josh is a student of the game.”
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Adams’s Wales debut in 2018 must have seemed an unlikely prospect three years earlier. Raised in Hendy in Carmarthenshire, he had played for Llanelli and Wales Under-20 but only once for Scarlets and was released from the region’s academy. His agent had sent footage to Worcester, who were not yet guaranteed promotion from the Championship.
Over the next four years, Worcester never finished higher than tenth in the Premiership. Despite being in a perpetual relegation battle, Adams was one of the league’s most impressive backs. In 2017-18, no one scored more tries than him. It compelled Wales to look over the border and down the table, giving him a debut in the 2018 Six Nations.
That footage was viewed by Hewitt and Vesty. They saw a rugby brain setting him apart from a blur of talented athletes. Dean Ryan, the director of rugby, said they should sign Adams if Hewitt was confident this was a punt worth taking. “They gave me the opportunity when there was nothing else for me,” Adams said of Worcester when he left for Cardiff Blues in 2019.
Worcester loaned him out to Cinderford in National League 1 in his first season. He is one of many elite players steeled by formative experiences away from the bright lights. Cinderford’s home ground at Dockham Road could be arctic on a Thursday night, with faulty radiators and temperamental hot water. Adams then started 2016-17 with Nottingham in the Championship but he was soon on the bench for Worcester against Bath and went on to play 23 times that season.
That form carried into 2017-18 and brought his first Wales call-up. With 13 tries in all competitions by the end of January, he went straight into the No 14 jersey in a 34-7 win against Scotland.
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In the summer, with most of their 2017 Lions rested, Wales beat a full-strength Argentina in San Juan and Santa Fe. These were victories steeped in Warren Gatland philosophy: Wales had hardly any ball but defended resolutely, and in possession they were accurate, took the points and stole tries. Adams was responsible for the best: collecting a loose pass on his wing, more than 40 metres out, he arced backwards and infield into a gap, sidestepping off his right foot and then his left to send Emiliano Boffelli tumbling.
That was his first try for Wales and plenty followed. En route to the 2019 grand slam, Adams rose higher than Elliot Daly for Dan Biggar’s crossfield kick, juggling and crawling over the line to seal victory, and then at Murrayfield he stood up Blair Kinghorn before veering round the full back. Adams was then top tryscorer at the World Cup, with seven.
With Worcester and Wales, Adams had opportunities. Hewitt mentions that word at least ten times, and how Adams takes them. “Josh had one opportunity effectively when another young lad who was in the senior team got injured, and Josh stepped up straight away,” Hewitt says.
With hindsight, it is easy to say Scarlets got it wrong. How could they not see Adams was a future Lion? Talent-spotting is not a science, and if it is art then no one has mastered it. “I’ve let players go who have gone on to do well somewhere else,” Hewitt says. “Sometimes the players need a change of environment, a change of people around coaching them, to get the best out of them.
“Having worked with the Dragons [as the interim academy manager] now, there is limited opportunity for young Welsh players. There’s lots of good young kids who could be like Josh but never get to move on.”
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The latest opportunity comes in a series decider. Adams usually shrugs off setbacks. At the start of this year’s Six Nations, he was suspended for two games after breaching Covid regulations to attend his expected child’s gender-reveal party. He came back into Wales’s starting XV and scored in all three games.
Adams pulled out of the Lions team for the match against South Africa A to witness the birth of his daughter on Zoom. Gatland suggested the emotion might have counted against him in the first-Test reckoning. Given an opportunity this weekend that seemed as if it might have been lost, it would be nothing new if Adams turned it to his advantage.
