Josh Adams admits Wales are ‘miles’ behind England

Wales wing Josh Adams concedes that the team have plenty of work to do if they are to make up the ground on arch rivals England.

The two teams face each other in the Autumn Nations Cup on Saturday, but the Red Rose are in by far the better form having won six matches in a row.

Eddie Jones’ men secured the Six Nations title with a victory against Italy and have started their end-of-year series well after defeating Georgia and Ireland.

Faltered under new head coach

In contrast, the Welsh have struggled under new head coach Wayne Pivac, succumbing to six successive defeats before that run was ended with an unconvincing 18-0 triumph over Los Lelos.

Former captain Gwyn Jones was critical of the team, saying that they are “miles behind” the Red Rose and merely hoping that Pivac’s men are able to keep the scoreline close this weekend.

“I would take competitive now,” Jones told Scrum V. “I think if we were able to put them under pressure or score a couple of tries, make them work hard for the win, I think we’d be more than happy with that.”

Adams agreed with Jones’ assessment over Wales’ current predicament, but is confident that they can turn it around and potentially stun the English on Saturday.

The wing said: “He is right there. He isn’t lying when he says that when you look at the rankings. I believe we’re down to ninth at the minute and England are up in second.

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“What is most important is we stick together as a group which we’ve been doing really well and we just focus on ourselves.

“We understand England are a great team – of course they are. We can also be a great team and have to have that belief in ourselves that we can go out and perform.

“With no disrespect to Georgia, England are a far greater outfit than the one we faced at the weekend. We’re under no doubts as to how good they’ve been for the last couple of weeks.

“We’re going to be working hard this week, as we have done every week, and hopefully we can take our week’s practice on to the field.

“Our practice has been really good for the past couple of weeks and it’s been quite frustrating we haven’t taken that from the training field to the match. If we can do that this Saturday then I think we’ll be in a great spot.

“I can’t see there being no crowd taking anything away from the edge the two teams are going to bring at the weekend.”