‘Angry’ Adams ready to roar after winning fitness battle
WALES are ready to unleash an ‘angry’ Josh Adams against Australia after the star winger passed a fitness test to play today.
Adams was named in the side to face the Wallabies under the proviso that he came through training following the announcement.
It has now been confirmed that Adams - and tight-head prop Tomas Francis - have been cleared to play.
Speaking at his captain’s run press conference, Wales skipper Ellis Jenkins, a team-mate of Adams’ at Cardiff, spoke about what makes the winger, who has 17 tries in 34 Tests for his country, so special.
“Where do you start?” laughed Jenkins. “He’s just class, he’s a worldclass finisher and he’s proven that on numerous occasions.
“What people probably don’t see is how competitive he is and how angry he is. He’s very physical, he wants to defend.
“Quite often, particularly backs get the reputation that they like to attack and they don’t like to defend. But it really excites him, trying to smoke people.
“You can see he really thrives on the physical aspect of that.
“He’s probably grown over the last couple of years to become a lot more vocal. With his experience and his stature in the game... it comes with that.
“He’s one of the leaders throughout the team who are vocal and have a big say in things. He falls into that category.
“I can’t speak highly enough of him. His professionalism off the field is fantastic and it’s not a coincidence that he’s continuously improving and consistently excellent.”
Adams was poised to take an experimental foray into the outside centre channel against Fiji last week with head coach Wayne Pivac keen to explore his options in that position ahead of the 2023 Rugby World Cup.
But he was an extremely late withdrawal, pulling up during the pre-game warm-up with a calf problem.
Pivac has hinted that Adams could yet move to the midfield during the game against Australia, but Jenkins explained how frustrated he was to miss out a week ago.
“It’s one of those things. He was carrying a bit of tightness after the team run,” Jenkins explained.
“He felt okay in the morning [Sunday]. No-one ever wants to pull out, and you are sort of arguing with yourself in your head.
“It’s a fine line between digging in for the team, and then costing the team by being subbed after five minutes. Fair play to Josh.
“I am not sure what the conversation went like with Josh and the medical team, but he obviously pushed it as far as he could, gave it a go in the warm-up, and it was no good.
“We would rather that and have him fit for this week and going forward, rather than try and push it and potentially put himself out for longer.
“We would have loved for him to have played, particularly at 13 - he probably offers something a little bit different - and it would be good for him to get some experience in that position, particularly looking towards the World Cup.
“You want players who can play multiple positions, because your squad is so small, but I am sure he will get other opportunities to do that.”
Wales head into the game with one win from the first three games of their autumn campaign.
Australia have lost the opening two matches of their autumn tour and face losing every game on the trip for the first time since the sport went professional.
Both teams are depleted by injuries and unavailability of players - Wales have 17 players missing - but there is much to play for.
Jenkins, though, was keen to avoid overstating the point.
“It’s easy to say is it a success or failure?” He pointed out. “A loss at the weekend definitely doesn’t make the campaign a failure.
“In sport everyone always gets carried away with results. No one remembers the fact that South Africa lost a couple of games in 2018 before they went on to win the World Cup in 2019.
“Sometimes, it’s about the process and what the end goal is. We want to win and get two wins. The South Africa game could have been a win as well, there were just a couple of things we got wrong in the last 15 minutes which meant the game got away from us.
“If that hadn’t happened, we’d be having a totally different conversation. It’s easy to catastrophise things based on results, but we’re trying not to.”