Young Gun: Dean Adamson – Bedford winger

If at first you don’t succeed try, try and try again. This could the title of Dean Adamson’s rugby career so far.
With his time running out in the Bedford academy, the winger took part in the first team’s pre-season in the summer of 2012 looking to secure his first professional contract.
But Mike Rayer, who is renowned for producing some of the best talents in English rugby, sent him back to his old club Ampthill in National League Three to experience men’s rugby at a lower level.
The next summer, Adamson came back having helped the Midlands side reach their highest level ever with a promotion to the National League Two.
Another pre-season at Bedford followed and it looked like that contract was around the corner when he was involved in a pre-season friendly against Northampton.
But again Rayer had other plans and sent him back to Ampthill.
It wasn’t easy to take but Adamson was keen to prove a point.
Thirty-one starts and 24 tries later, that’s every single Ampthill league game played and the top of the try-scoring chart, Adamson, now 21, left no choice to Rayer but to offer him that long-awaited contract.
“Because of my lack of experience at senior level I knew I wasn’t going to break straight into the Blues first team and that’s why Mike Rayer sent me back to Ampthill,” Adamson told The Rugby Paper.
“It was great to experience men’s rugby at another level. But the most important for me was to get game time.
“If you don’t play week-in week-out when you’re 18 it makes it a lot harder to progress.
“The ego might have taken a slight knock but I was on the pitch every Saturday and there is nothing better than that.
“Now I’m back at the club I’m aiming to earn a place in the starting XV and get as much game time as I can.
“The physicality of men’s rugby is a massive step up. Playing against Saints last year showed me it was a different world with Ken Pisi opposite me and Ben Foden at full-back.
“It was pretty tough but it was very good for me to challenge myself against world class players. It’ll be the same in the Championship this season but hopefully I’ll be able to rise to it.”
An Ampthill boy through and through, Adamson achieved a childhood dream playing for the first team and now another is about to come true with the start of his professional career but he knows things could turn sour anytime in rugby so he is also preparing his future with a university degree.
“I played at Ampthill since I was five so it was a massive honour for me and my family to turn out for the first team over the past two seasons,” he added.
“I moved to the Bedford academy when I was 17, went back to Ampthill the past two years and now I’m back at Bedford so it’s like a full circle really.
“I’m also about to start my third year at Nottingham Trent University studying real estate which is very important to me. I don’t want to put all my eggs in one basket just in case for some reason things don’t work out in rugby.”