The Cardiff Blues tight-head has enjoyed a breakthrough campaign on the regional and international stages. Lewis was thrown in at the deep-end against Munster at the start of the season – and he has never looked back.
The 20-year-old went onto shunt Wales to Six Nations Grand Slam glory, helping him earn a place in Jason Strange’s Junior World Championships squad. But Lewis’s dream year can still get even better.
He said: “I was playing Premiership rugby at the start of the season and then to get called up to the Blues first team and play regional rugby was amazing, I didn’t expect it. And then we won the Six Nations which was great, so it will be a great end to the season if we can do well in the Junior World Championships.
“I’d like to think we can go all the way but we have to concentrate on the group – Ireland, Georgia, New Zealand – and take each game as it comes. Winning the Six Nations builds a lot of confidence into this tournament. We have had a good couple of weeks training as a team and got a lot out of that.”
Wales kickoff their campaign against Ireland on Tuesday at Manchester City FC’s Academy Stadium. The junior dragons then take-on Georgia before the ultimate test against New Zealand’s ‘Baby Blacks’. But Lewis says Wales are flying-high into the tournament on-the-back of their grand slam success.
He said: “We’re going in confident and have a good chance to do well in the group stages and then kick on. But this is a new task to concentrate on, we’re not looking at underdogs, favourites or anything like that, we have a job to do and have prepared well to do it.
“In the Six Nations, Ireland put more points on us than any other team so we know they are a good attacking threat. That’s something we’ve really looked at in training and it will be a good test and marker to see where we are.”
