IRELAND v WALES: SHANE WILLIAMS: JOHN O'SULLIVANsalutes the jinking genius of the failed scrumhalf who went on to score 50 tries in the red shirt of Wales
MARK WILLIAMS placed a £50 wager with a bookmaker prior to his son’s first cap against France in the 2000 Six Nations Championship that his progeny would go on to become the leading try scorer in the history of Welsh rugby. He was offered odds of 500 to 1.
That paternal prescience was rewarded on Saturday, March 15th 2008 when Shane Williams scored his 41st try for the Principality, thereby edging past Gareth Thomas’ scoring milestone: father collected £25,000 while his son accepted the acclamation of a nation.
The sheer exuberance and flamboyant nature of his approach to the game seemed in perfect harmony with the sense of theatre that accompanied his landmark try: centre stage at the Millennium Stadium it was a score that helped Wales win a Grand Slam.
Beating France, the same opposition against whom he had made his Test match bow eight years earlier when coming off the replacements bench as a 22-year-old, added a curious symmetry.
It was to prove a career-defining year for the 5ft 7in will-o’-the-wisp, acknowledged in the receipt of the 2008 IRB Player of the Year, The Six Nations Player of the tournament and the BBC Wales Sports Personality of the Year awards, edging out boxer Joe Calzaghe for the latter accolade.
His rugby career wasn’t always festooned with bouquets, a state of affairs that goes back to his schooldays. Born in Morriston, near Swansea, he grew up in Glanamman and first picked up a rugby ball at primary school but when he enrolled in Amman Valley Comprehensive School it was suggested to him he was too small to play rugby and he instead embraced soccer, playing for the Cwmamman AFC.
It may be apocryphal but the story goes that in his first appearance for the club’s junior team he ended up in goal because no one else would volunteer, a tale substantiated by coach Alun Rees who recalls the diminutive young Williams as “a superb goalkeeper.”
His sporting destiny was framed by a decision not to play in a soccer cup final but instead tog out with his friends for Amman United RFC: he scored five tries.
Although a Llanelli fan growing up, Neath came to a financial arrangement with Amman United to secure his services and Williams was handed his first professional contract for the princely sum of £7,500 per annum. The club’s coach, Lyn Jones, quickly recognised he could not leave out a player who had ostensibly been signed as second choice scrumhalf and re-routed him to the wing.
Injuries (hamstring problems and a stalled career in 2002 made him think about quitting the sport), lingering doubts about his physical capacity to survive in the Test arena and the occasional propensity to run down cul-de-sacs meant some coaches took a little more convincing than others. The mullet hairstyle probably didn’t help either.
It was impossible, though, to camouflage his natural ability, that pneumatic sidestep and acceleration measured in G-Forces. In the modern professional game Williams is one of the few who would vindicate the old maxim, that “rugby is a game for all shapes and sizes”.
He scored a try on his first start in a 2000 Six Nations game, against Italy, but it was in the 2005 Grand Slam season under Mike Ruddock that Williams’ importance to the Welsh team was more fully recognised. He crossed for the match-winning try in an 11-9 victory over England that got the campaign off to a winning start and added further tries against Italy and Scotland.
He was chosen for the ill-fated Lions tour to New Zealand, one of a cast of thousands. He did equal the individual try scoring record for a Lion in a single match by running in five against Manawatu. He racked up five tries at the 2007 World Cup but it paled in comparison to what followed in 2008.
Headlining a second Grand Slam, this time under Warren Gatland, Williams bagged a brace of tries against Scotland and Italy, scored the only try of the match in the victory against Ireland at Croke Park – the only time he has scored against Ireland in seven encounters – before his recording-breaking and financially lucrative score in the Grand Slam clash with France. His six tries equalled the Six Nations record held by England centre Will Greenwood.
He produced a man-of-the-match performance in the third Test while playing for the Lions against South Africa last summer – he wasn’t selected for the first two – scoring two tries as the visitors triumphed. The records kept tumbling, memorable and brilliant interventions like the match-winning score against Scotland this season and then the absolute individual excellence of his try against the French.
Scampering down the wing with virtually no space, he accelerated past one defender, jinked past Alexis Palisson, leaving him sprawling in his wake before stepping inside Clement Poitrenaud: it captured the essence of Williams the rugby player and represented his 50th try in Test rugby.
Today he’ll square up against his friend, Ospreys team-mate and the player whose try won last season’s Grand Slam for Ireland, Tommy Bowe. Williams smiled: “He was a great player anyway but since joining the Ospreys he has come on in leaps and bounds. For 80 minutes he is looking for work and that’s why he pops up in the right places.
“He is one of the deadliest finishers in the game at the moment. We are certainly going to have to keep an eye on him. Hopefully, we won’t kick the ball to him too much because he has a couple of feet height advantage. He’s been playing consistently well for the last couple of seasons, one of Ireland’s head figures at the moment.
“He is difficult to mark because he doesn’t just stay on his wing. He comes off shoulders and he stays wide when he has to, hits good angles and is a lump of a boy; he breaks tackles.
“Hopefully I can work a bit harder than him and have him chasing me today. There’s always banter. Off the field we are good friends. When you get on the field it is a war and you want to win that war.”
Williams might be smaller in stature but he casts a longer shadow than most of his rivals in Test rugby.
Williams Facts
Age: 33
Clubs: Amman United, Neath, Ospreys Birthplace: Morriston
Height: 5ft 7ins
Weight: 80 kg (12st 8lbs)
Honours: Wales, Lions (2005, 2009), Barbarians.
Caps: 71 Tries: 50
