Josh Adams knows what it feels like to deliver on a South African stage, and Cardiff are asking him to do it again on Saturday. Cardiff face Stormers in Cape Town at 14:30 BST in their first United Rugby Championship play-off fixture, a quarter-final that will test whether they can turn a rare trip into a breakthrough.
Adams said he has been lucky enough to win things with Wales, but he believes a knockout victory with Cardiff would sit alongside the biggest moments of his career. “I've been lucky enough to win things with Wales and that is really special,” he said. “But speak to players and when they win domestic trophies or achieve really good things with their club it feels different because they are there 80% of the year.”
The winger has plenty of evidence behind him when he talks about big occasions. He helped Wales win the 2019 Grand Slam and the 2021 Six Nations title, and he was central to one of the most memorable results in Welsh rugby when Wales became the first Welsh side to beat the Springboks on home soil in 2022. Adams scored in the 78th minute in Bloemfontein four years ago, with Gareth Anscombe adding the conversion, and he now wants another result in the country where he already has a history of producing under pressure.
This is his seventh campaign at Cardiff, after three seasons in England's Premiership with Worcester, and he has already settled into the idea that club success can feel different from international honours. Adams, who has 70 caps for Wales, said a quarter-final win would be “right up there with some really big achievements” and added that “there are a lot of things that need to go your way, and you need a bit of luck on your side.”
Cardiff, though, go in as underdogs and the numbers underline why. They have won only two of their 10 URC trips to South Africa, and both of those victories came against Sharks in Durban. Their last win in the country came in 2024, when they beat Sharks again, but Stormers are “very, very good at home,” as Adams put it, and the physical edge of South African rugby is part of what makes this assignment so severe.
That is why Cardiff will need more than one standout performance. Adams said the match will demand a squad effort from 1 to 23 and that quality on the bench could decide whether they leave Cape Town with a result. Cardiff have already shown they can beat Stormers in South Africa, but doing it in a play-off would be a different sort of statement, and the unanswered question now is whether this group can turn a difficult trip into its first URC knockout win.
