AT TIMES, RUGBY can seem to come almost effortlessly to Nick Williams.
That is exactly why the enormous number eight gets so frustrated when it doesn’t quite come off.
Last Friday night was one of those occasions, the 30-year-old replaced at the half-time break after some uncharacteristic errors as he apparently tried to force matters and ended up spilling attempted offloads and running into alleys where he became isolated.
Williams was arguably the shrewdest signing in European rugby last season. Coming through tough times at Munster and Aironi, there were few coaches overly eager to gamble on the Kiwi – until ‘Cowboy’ rode to his rescue.
“He was my first professional coach and that relationship there is quite unique,” Williams says of Mark Anscombe, a coach he clearly knows long enough to call by his nickname.
“I had a successful enough career in New Zealand and that was down to a number of factors and Cowboy was probably one of them. He pushed me to my limits in my first few years, when I was a fresh kid off the streets of Auckland.
“Then, if you wanna be fair, things went pear-shaped when I was down south and went to Italy.
“He’s grumpy at times, but sometimes he knows how to make things click – he knows how to get the best out of me and I like to bounce ideas off him and in that way I need to give something back to him for rekindling my career if you wanna say that.”
Williams is loving life in Belfast and with a sincere smile he says the same is true of his family. With a young daughter, the number eight instinctively moves to censor himself while explaining that he’s happy to work hard for the entire coaching ticket, but we encourage him to carry on unedited.
“I’ve got a relationship with [Neil] Doaky and [Jonny Bell] Dinger and all the other lads. If I didn’t have a good relationship I wouldn’t want to play for them and bust my balls week in week out.”
He added: “If your family’s happy, you’re always going to play well on the field and hopefully I can continue doing that. Not just for the players and management, but for myself and my family and our supporters here.”
The success of lifting both the IRUPA and Pro12 player of the year awards last season do nor appear to have gone to his head. In fact his facial expression is that of a man who has locked them away in his past while he struggles with the form of his present.
He admits mild frustration at being used as a diversionary tactic for most of his eight matches this term, but is soon contented as long as somebody else takes up the limelight and the line-breaks.
“I’ve been used more as a decoy runner this year and wherever I’ve got a lot of defenders on myself there’s always bound to be space somewhere else. It is a bit frustrating at times. I’ve always loved the physicality part of it, but defences are a bit smarter now and tend to wrap the ball up a bit quicker than they did last season.
“A bit of frustration sets in every now and then, but whenever I see someone else coast through a gap I know it’s for the better of the team.”
If Williams can shake off the calf injury which punctuated the first half of the season, we will doubtless see the number eight back making regular barreling runs. And when that happens we will once again be afforded maximum opportunity to watch a master at work. Williams’ offloads are a key component of his game and so often prove a lightening rod for his side’s attacks with white shirts pouring through thanks to the clean smooth passes provided by the man who has just taken down a tackler.
So, how does he do it? Well, as you might expect, they don’t come easy:
“Man, some of them come off. Some of them don’t. First you’ve got to try and beat your defender, that’s one thing. Then whenever you’re on the front foot it’s always easier to try and offload.
“It goes both ways; the offloader and the person that you’re offloading to. There’s a lot of communication work that goes into it. Blind passes are pretty rare nowadays, so you’ve got to make sure you see your man before you give it – half of the job is the person you’re offloading to. If he’s not talking or he’s not there you can offload and it doesn’t come off.”
And that’s about as far as Williams can take the tuition. It’s never easy to break down pure instinct into component parts. The finer points cannot be taught, it’s just in his DNA.
“It’s always been in my game. I’ve been gifted with big hands and long arms, so I tend to like to use them as best I can.”
