The Cardiff Rugby star has scored 17 tries in 34 test matches for Wales and is one of the first names on Wayne Pivac’s team sheet. Adams is known as a deadly finisher, but he is also a strong distributor with a lot of peripheral vision and reads the game well defensively.
Wales head coach Wayne Pivac evidently sees the qualities in Adams which are needed to move from wing to centre, with the 26-year-old originally named to start at 13 against Fiji before a calf injury forced him to pull out in the warm-up, while he was excellent in midfield during Cardiff’s brave loss to Toulouse last weekend.
“I was disappointed that my calf and achilles issue played up in the warm-up,” said Adams. “I was really looking forward to it. I had a good week’s prep in the centre, and I’d enjoyed it.
“It was a new challenge for me, and it was exciting. The injury I picked up was out of my control.
“It was one of those obnoxious, crazy things that I’d never had before and it was unknown, so we couldn’t really pinpoint what it was. It was more precautionary.
“But I was quite annoyed with myself for picking that up because I was super-excited to play in the centre against Fiji. Wayne didn’t pinpoint a specific thing he wanted me to bring.
“It’s about the way we go about things as a team, so just my usual stuff, really. I would have slotted in and had, potentially, more touches of the ball.
“Maybe I would have more responsibility in terms of being a voice in the defensive line. Usually, our 12 or 13 is our defensive leader.
“But he wanted me to play my game, get my hands on the ball as many times as I could, and put the boys outside me into space as much as I can.” There are many examples of world class wingers moving in field as their careers progress. New Zealand great Ma’a Nonu started his test career on the wing before moving to centre and current All Blacks superstar Rieko Ioane has recently done similar.
From a Welsh point of view George North was widely regarded as one of the world’s leading back-three players, has been a revelation since moving to outside centre. Adams believes he would be more than capable of moving into the midfield at test level should the need arise in the future.
“It’s called getting older and slower!,” joked Adams. “No, the positions are different but, in some scenarios, they are not too different.
“You are asked to make more defensive reads around set plays at 13. In attack, you are also utilised more as a gain line option.
“But then again, in modern rugby most wingers are certainly gain line threats as well coming off their wings. There isn’t too much difference.
“One major difference I found in the few weeks training I had at 13 was back field stuff. As a wing, you are fixated on making sure your back field coverage is right, your kick reception and all that stuff. When you move into the centre, your job isn’t to worry about that.
“It’s more to defend the front line and make sure you are connected to the guys outside you. You find yourself turning to run and then remember you are actually playing in the centre.
“So, it’s small things like that that take a bit of getting used to.” With the Six Nations just under two months away France and Ireland will be considered favourites given the way they both comprehensively beat New Zealand, while England will also be confident having overcome world champions South Africa.
Despite being the reigning champions few people are giving Wales much hope of defending their title after an autumn campaign which posed more questions than answers, and yielded two victories against Fiji, and Australia respectively with both sides falling foul of red cards.
But Adams insists Wales thrive on being underdogs and has warned their rivals to underestimate them at their peril. He said: “I would be happy to be deemed as underdogs. I am sure the squad would as well.
“It’s that how we were deemed as last year, then it worked out pretty well. As a group, we know where we want to go. We are going in the right direction, and we have a few players coming back from injury, so strength is improving. I think we’ll be in a good spot.”
