Casting a Long Shadow

When Shane Williams was picked to go to the World Cup in 2003, it was on the basis that he’d played a bit at scrum half, so he might be useful to have on the bench. Too small to be an out and out contender, they said. Too many tricks in his box, too likely to land his team mates in trouble in a rugbying world where risk was a dirty word. Where coaches put teams through hours of retention drills on the assumption that sooner or later the oppo would flop over the ball and give your version of Jonny his chance to have a pot at goal. Then jog back to halfway and do it all again. What you don’t want in a team with that game plan is some fly boy with happy feet. Someone who will expose you to turnovers.

Shane duly went to the World Cup, where Wales shocked the living daylights out of the All Blacks and the eventual champions, England.  The fly boy with happy feet became the idol of every vertically challenged rugby player in the world, and for a while even prop forwards stopped practising their drop goals at training to try to imitate that jagging side step.  In Wales he became one of the new breed of rugby celebs.  His talent to entertain meant that soon the media came calling, and they found that his easy style on the pitch was replicated in front of the cameras.

His ability to unlock defences made him a key member of successive Welsh sides. Usually, wingers are the great finishers, the boys with the wheels who are able to round moves off in the corner.  Shane could certainly do that, but it was his appetite for work that made him so difficult to defend against. Look at his two “last” tries. Against the Wallabies in the Autumn, and again last night against Leinster, he drifted off his wing, and scanned the defence in front of him. Then there was a call, a swerve, and he skipped past despairing dives.

But don’t let this easy charm fool you. Shane is no enthusiastic amateur who just made it because he was an outrageous talent. He is also one of the great professionals, a player who knew he had to work hard in order to make it at the highest level, who had to learn to be more than the fly boy with the happy feet. That makes him a great role model for all those who play the game. He reminds the coach of the dangers of restricted thinking, he reminds players young and old that there is always something you can do to be a better player. Most of all, he reminds the spectator of why they love this stupid, rule ridden game in the first place – to see talented players do things you could only dream of doing…