League: Sonny fits the bill

Make Sonny Bill Williams the Kiwis' captain and build a team around him.

That's the call from former Kiwis' coach Graham Lowe, who said that he would appoint 19-year-old Williams captain for the next 10 years.

"I would build everything around him. There is no one else like him in New Zealand and although he is young, we need to take advantage of his special talents," Lowe said. "That's my vision for Kiwi league."

The Kiwis must look to rebuild after an awful 2004 where they were woeful in the end-of-season Tri-Series tournament involving Australia and Great Britain, and only just scraped home against the hapless French.

Lowe said current captain Ruben Wiki had a year, at best, left in top-flight league. It was now time to look to the future.

"He's [Wiki] been terrific, but Williams is the future.

"With him at the helm I believe we have the players to regularly win against Australia."

Warriors skipper Steve Price says the Bulldogs phenom might be playing at a different club in 2005. Williams comes off contract at the end of the season and clubs are able to negotiate with his agents Chris and Gavin Orr when the anti-tampering deadline comes off on June 30.

"It will be hard [for the Bulldogs] to keep him," Price told the Herald on Sunday. "He's not the only one. They've got five guys coming off contract and they're all big names, so it's certainly going to be difficult."

The Bulldogs were busted for massive salary-cap infractions during the 2002 season and although they managed to keep enough of their squad together to launch a successful title bid last year, they have found it hard to keep their stars.

Nigel Vagana, Willie Talau, Darren Smith, Travis Norton, Paul Rauhihi, Dennis Scott, Johnathan Thurston, Jamie Feeney, Hutch Maiava and, of course, Price, have all left since the scandal.

"You really want to keep your best up-and-coming young players and Sonny epitomises that," Price said. "The Bulldogs will be going no hold's barred on him, but the reality is the more they spend on him the less chance they've got on keeping others.

"It's a delicate situation."

Another way of putting it would be feeding frenzy.

A Warriors source indicated that there would not be a club in the NRL that wouldn't be interested in Williams, but that interest would wane unless there were enough players coming off contract within their own clubs to free up the necessary money required for the boy wonder.

"I know he'd love to keep playing for the Bulldogs," Price said. "But in saying that, if they haven't signed him by then [June 30], I'd hate to be doing it after because there'll be clubs crawling over each other trying to get to him."