Centurion skipper’s superpowers earn him Wales recall

Simon Thomas 

It was way back in 2020 that Josh Macleod was first called up by Wales.

But, some six years on, he still only has the four caps to his name.

To a large extent, that’s down to the horrendous misfortune he has endured on the injury front amid a ruptured Achilles, knee ligament damage, shoulder surgery and hamstring issues.

That bad luck struck again in the autumn. Having been Wales’ starting openside flanker in the two summer Tests against Japan, he was then ruled out of the November internationals after suffering a pectoral muscle tear.

But now the Scarlets skipper is fit and firing once more and has been recalled for the upcoming Six Nations.

That comes on the back of eye-catching Champions Cup performances against Pau and Northampton from the man who was born in Monte Carlo, but raised in Pembrokeshire.

So, after making his 100th appearance for the region in this Saturday’s BKT URC clash at home to Ulster Rugby, he will link up with the Welsh squad to prepare for the Championship opener against England at Twickenham.

The Scarlets’ newly installed Director of Rugby Nigel Davies has a huge amount of time for the 29-year-old breakaway forward.

“He’s fantastic. He’s a hugely impressive guy,” said Davies.

“The boys are 100 per cent behind Josh because they can see he wears his heart on his sleeve. He speaks very articulately, he is very measured and he is a true Scarlet. It’s just fabulous to have him in the environment.

“The best way I can describe him is that he’s an impressive man.

“He’s got the complete respect of everybody in the group. When he speaks, people listen and when he speaks he speaks sense.

“More than that, his actions speak as loud as his words.

“He’s a good reader of the game. One of his superpowers is turnovers and if he can get two or three of them in a game that makes a massive difference to the performance of the team.

“There’s also his ability to communicate with others, to pull people in. A couple of times against Northampton, we were up against it, but the team came back and that was largely due to his influence on the field.”

Steve Tandy

Macleod is one of nine Scarlets selected by Wales coach Steve Tandy in a 38-strong group for the upcoming Championship, with Sam Costelow, Tom Rogers, Blair Murray, Joe Hawkins, Eddie James, Ellis Mee, Ryan Elias, and Taine Plumtree also on board.

“We probably haven’t had anywhere near that amount of players in the squad since my last time here when he had the young group of Rhys Priestland, Jonathan Davies, Liam Williams, George North and that lot,” said Davies, who has returned to the region after a 14-year gap.

“Actually, there are quite a lot of similarities between this group now and that group.

“That group started off in a similar position where nobody really knew who they were. Then they started to get their heads above water and people started to see who they were.”

Davies says the selection of so many Scarlets for Wales duty reaffirms his belief that he has come in to work with a group which has real quality in its ranks.

“That’s absolutely the case, 100 per cent,” said the 29-times capped former Test centre.

“The one thing I wasn’t sure of is I didn’t know where they were against other teams.

“So the fact that we were playing Northampton last weekend was a great opportunity for me to calibrate our players against some of the best in Europe and they came through strongly.

“There were very fine margins between winning and losing.

“When we came back in at the start of this week, I showed a clip from the coverage of the game where the commentator said right at the end ‘This is a brave Scarlets team and they have given hope’.

“To have somebody who has not been in the environment say that about the team is a quite powerful message.

“So, there’s absolutely hope for Scarlets fans.

“I think there’s a huge amount of potential here. There’s a few players who probably don’t know how good they are and don’t quite know their game right now.

“We are trying to provide a structure they can work within which will allow them to spark within the game we are trying to play.”

Ulster

Looking ahead to the league meeting with third-placed Ulster, Davies said: “It’s a great challenge. They are playing a lot of rugby and they are very competitive. They have had fantastic results and obviously won a lot more games than us.

“They have changed the way they play a little bit, so they are a threat with the ball and it’s a team we haven’t beaten for a long time.

“But that’s all in the past. We are focused on the future and underpinning our performances with the values we have spoken about and being ruthless.

“Last week, I spoke about what it would take to win. This week, I’m speaking about what we need to win.”

As for captain Macleod, he has taken heart from the team’s four-try display during the 43-28 defeat to Northampton at Franklin’s Gardens.

“I was immensely proud of the effort, desire, fight. That was shown in heaps,” he said.

“There were elements out there that cost us the game, but on the whole I felt it was a decent performance.”

He also paid tribute to the travelling Scarlets supporters, saying: “Our fans are incredibly loyal. We speak about giving something back to these people who spend a lot of money and time coming to support us.

“From a playing group and organisation, it means the world to see people turning up in their hundreds to support us and hopefully we showed a little bit of what we are trying to give back.”