Debut: vs Featherstone Rovers (A) 26th March 1927

Leeds Honours: Challenge Cup (Winner: 1932), Championship (Finalist: 1930), Yorkshire Cup (Winner: 1930-31)

Born on 14th November 1909 and 'christened' at Meanwood Road School, where his budding talent was quickly spotted by schoolmaster W. A. Davies, the Leeds centre of Rorke's Drift fame, 'Juicy' became the lynchpin of the City Boys' team over a period of two-and-a-half seasons, showing exceptional promise as a scrum-half of remarkable rubber-ball resilience and guile. Even so, had he been born a couple of years earlier he might well have been lost to the game on leaving school. As it was, thanks to the initiative of Mr Eddie Pickard, and others, in persuading the Leeds Club to encourage local talent through the sponsorship of a 14-16 League and a 'B' team, he lived only for Headingley from the moment he turned out in a curtain-raiser to the Huddersfield match on 12th September 1925.

Debuting against Featherstone Rovers, 'Juicy' was more than content to serve an extended 'A' team apprenticeship, with odd first team outings, all the while maturing physically as he polished his natural, God-given skills in the hard school of experience. His big chance came in May 1930, and the 'Pride of Meanwood Road' was ready. Drafted into a weakened team for the Championship Semi-Final, he rose to the occasion splendidly, scoring a crucial try and rallying the 'no-hopers' to an incredible victory over St Helens at Knowsley Road.

As for the Final, if the rest of the Loiners had matched his heroic efforts against Huddersfield, particularly in the replay at Thrum Hall, the coveted Championship Trophy would have found its way to Headingley long before 1961. A jewel of a scrum-half and more than ready to take over permanently from Walter Swift, Adams and the rampant Loiners impressed all before them in the opening months of the 1930-31 campaign with a long-overdue Yorkshire Cup Final triumph over Huddersfield and a sequence of seventeen games without defeat, the last five alone yielding 49 tries and a tally of 205 points against 33.

Even when Joe 'Chimpy' Busch, the Australian Test scrum-half, had been signed, Adams was winning his international spurs with a highly creditable display against Wales at Fartown. County recognition followed a month later, victory over Glamorgan and Monmouthshire carrying with it a Championship medal, to set alongside the pair won in Yorkshire's Cup and League Competitions.

1931-32 developed inevitably into a swings-and-roundabouts season, with the management torn between the sterling reliability and all-round consistency of the local-born master craftsman, and the tearaway Australian with only one gear. When it came to the end-of-season crunch matches, however, 'Juicy' was the one they turned to.

Selected only days earlier for the Australian Tour, along with Joe Thompson, Stan Smith and John Lowe, there he was at Belle Vue, ruling the roost in the Challenge Cup Semi-Final replay as Leeds ran out winners against Halifax by 9 points to 2. As for the Final at Central Park, his slick combination and telepathic rapport with stand-off Evan Williams and loose-forward Charlie Glossop proved more than a match for Swinton's redoubtable trio of Bryn Evans, Billo Rees and Fred Butters.

Finding himself behind Busch following a trip Down Under, he signed on the dotted line for Huddersfield, where he went on to create Rugby League history. He wore Fartown's claret and gold against Warrington in the free-scoring 1933 Wembley Final, and then going back there a couple of years later with Castleford, to plot the downfall of Huddersfield. Three Challenge Cup Finals; three different Clubs; three winner's medals. Yet surely his finest hour came with Castleford in the 1939 Championship Final at Maine Road. Magnificent in defeat, he brought out the best in the men around him, rallying his forwards, whipping up the backs, and going through on his own time and again, with a splendid line in dummies for the unwary. It was the very stuff that scrum-halves' dreams are made on, and all done with the unhurried ease of the true master.

At one time Licensee of Woodhouse Lane's Marquis Inn and later of The Park on Hyde Park Road, 'Juicy' served in the N.F.S., prior to volunteering for rear-gunner duties in the R.A.F.