Parkes delighted to be central figure in Wales partnership
WALES centre Hadleigh Parkes has revealed the secret to his ‘telepathic’ relationship with centre partner Jonathan Davies.
Since Parkes made his Wales debut in 2017, no centre pairing in world rugby has played more international rugby together than the Scarlets duo.
The Georgia game will be the 11th time the pair have worn the red 12 and 13 jerseys together, despite Davies’s 2018-19 season ending with a foot injury in November.
But it’s their relationship off the field that has allowed the duo to flourish on it.
“We get on pretty well off the field - we have roomed together for most of the time over here,” said Parkes.
“We have coffees, we go out for dinner and stuff like that.
“The more times you get to play together, the better it gets and the easier it gets as well.
“My first year, he didn’t play because he was injured. I have been very lucky, playing alongside Foxy and Scotty Williams, that I have had two players I’ve known well and get on well with off the field.
“If you get on well off the field, it makes it a lot easier to go out there and to have each other’s back on the field as well.”
Parkes agreed that, at times, the pair can be almost telepathic.
“Yeah, sometimes. Having played with him a lot, you kind of know what he is going to do, a little bit. He reads the game very well.
“I know that he’s always got my back. If I turn in, I know he’s going to be there.
“I think we are pretty lucky that we get to play at regional level as well. Foxy is one of those guys who has done extremely well on the world stage for a number of years, with the Lions as well.
“He’s a world-class player. Defensively he’s outstanding, and in attack he is a big boy as well. We get on pretty well off the field – we have roomed together for most of the time over here.
“Hopefully it will continue to go well over the next few weeks.”
Parkes feels fit and ready to make a real mark on the competition.
Having been through the gruelling three-month training camp that took players to the altitude of the Swiss Alps and the heat of Turkey, Parkes explained the impact the regime had on him.
“I just feel fit. Sometimes, and I know it sounds silly, it’s more the recovery speed after a period of exertion,” he explained.
“We play a lot of touch games in training to put yourself under pressure with the ball.
“When you first start doing it you are taking a long time to recover.
“Now you are recovering very quickly, and you can feel that in games as well after a two or threeminute phase – you recover so much quicker.”
But now all the preparation is done.
Parkes attended his first World Cup capping ceremony, where players are presented with special caps and participation medals, at the camp in Kitakyushu.
Wales are one of the final teams to get their campaign under way and the wait for Parkes, whose parents are flying in to watch, is almost over.
“Yeah, it was (emotional). To get that cap and the medal, you go back to your room and kind of look at it for a little while,” he said.
“It has been a pretty awesome journey, a privileged and humbling journey I’ve been on the last couple of years, and it’s one I have loved every moment of, and to be over here as part of this group is pretty surreal.
“It’s been an intense three months and you have always had that carrot at the end of the tunnel, and now you are actually here you have got to pinch yourself that you are at a World Cup, you are in Japan – the first one in Asia.”