I'd be surprised, to be honest. The adjustment on the cable is there for initial setup, plus to accommodate any stretch in the cable or "snugging-in" of the cable abutments at each end, during the car's life. Effectively, the handbrake lever itself is an L-shaped bracket, with a pivot at the "crook" of the "L" You pull on the long leg, and the cable is attached to the short leg. At the drum end, the outer part of the handbrake cable (like a bike brake cable but bigger!) abuts against a socket in the backplate of the brake drum and the inner cable goes through the backplate and on to a lever hanging down from the rearmost brake shoe.
That lever is also shaped like a letter "L". This time, to give you the leverage, the cable pulls on the LONG leg of the "L" and the short leg (and it really IS short!) is what "levers" the brake shoe hard against the inside of the drum. If you've ever used the "L"-shaped end of a "wrecking bar" (sometimes called a "Jemmy" or a "pry bar") to lever something, you might have noticed how much more effective it is when the force you're applying to the end is at 90 degrees to the weight of what you're trying to shift? It's the same with the handbrake. Because the long leg of the "L" is SO much longer than the short one (especially at the brake shoe end) you get terrific force on the short leg, but only a tiny amount of movement. For this reason, it's important to ensure that as much free movement as posisble is taken up by the brake adjusters BEFORE taking any slack out of the cable. This allows the actuating arm on the brake shoe to get the best possible leverage against the shoe. Adjusting the cable first, pulls that arm away from its rest position (where it has the greatest mechanical advantage) before the friction material touches the brake drum. It'll "work" - if you're lucky, perhaps well enough to pass an MOT, but it won't work anything like as well as it could have done.
If you just fit a new pair of shoes, the most likely outcome is that they will be too far out to get the drum back on because the auto adjusters will probably have worked to SOME extent during the car's life, so the new shoes will sit too far out (even before you connect the cable up). Usually, the biggest problem is getting the drum on and getting the shoes adjusted correctly, because as the drums wear, you get a "lip" forming on the inside edge, (where the shoe doesn't rub) so if the shoes are adjusted far enough out to be working correctly, the drum won't fit back on to them! Really, you need to put the drums in a lathe and cut the lip off. If it's not bad, you can usually get away with filing the worst of the rust on the lip off and then using a bit of brute force to push the brake drum over the shoes, but it is a bit messy!
