Chris Rattue: Farewell to the old Ali Williams

Ali Williams is facing his greatest challenge. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Ali Williams won't be back - not the Ali Williams we have come to know, anyway. The All Blacks' World Cup hopes have also been dealt a setback.

As Williams recuperates from his latest long-term injury, the former supercharged lock might consider the need to reinvent his game.

When sports stars talk about the shortness of careers, of the wonderful things they have being snatched away by injury or selection, the need to maximise potential when the going is good, then the long tall lock from Auckland is a prime example.

Once all chipper about a rugby sabbatical, Williams is now devastated because he has an enforced break - along with a very uncertain future, it has to be said.

Cruel luck had its wicked way when Williams' Achilles tendon ruptured a few minutes into his comeback game, the Blues' trial against the Chiefs on Friday night. This is the same injury which sidelined the lock for much of last year and was operated on in July.

Williams is reportedly determined to fight back, but the optimism may only come in waves, and will be interrupted by the lonely path for most players with long-term injuries trying to make their way back into a team.

Once central to every plan, even the best intentions of the All Black coach Graham Henry - who is offering him a backroom role - will not stop Williams feeling like a hanger-on for yet another season.

This is also a bitter blow to New Zealand's World Cup plans, because the chance of the rampaging Williams who All Black coaches and fans so admired actually re-emerging is ... next to nought, quite frankly.

And for all the talk of Isaac Ross, there is only one Ali Williams, potentially the best lock in world rugby, but with a career interrupted.

"There's no real logic for why it keeps happening," said Henry.

The "why" may remain a mystery, but the "what" not so. Williams has a weakness in this area. The medical people can say what they like, but the layman will say that having been struck twice by this problem, it is one that will not go away.

Williams undergoes an operation today and will miss at least six months of this season, and possibly the entire year. Any attempt to rush him back would be foolhardy.

Even if the tendon holds up (and there can be no guarantee of that), Williams faces many challenges getting back to where he was.

A factor working against him is the very thing that made him so good in the first place.

He was never the head-down grafting type. His strength was a rare and extraordinary open-field ability, allied to a cocky personality, which allowed him to take games at the highest level by the scruff of the neck.

=The bigger the challenge, the better he was. His best work was done in black.

What Williams had was an unusual instinct, athleticism and acceleration for such a big man. I think he is going to struggle to retrieve that because of the combined effect of a long layoff and age. That extra zip, the thing which made him so special, may well be gone.

His last match was in the Super 14 in early May. By the time he returns, he will have been out of action for nearly two years, diminishing the sharpness, power and aerobic ability which top-level players build up from younger days and retain through constant hard work plus - in the ideal circumstances - only short but vital breaks between seasons.

Williams will be close to 30 by his scheduled return, which is hardly rest-home material, but look around the Super 14 and you don't see all that many 30-plus footballers.

The question is: if his old weapons are blunted, will that maverick personality - one which, remember, saw him sent home from a Blues tour and take refuge with the Crusaders - allow him to accept his fate and find a new game (the way the legendary Michael Jones did after a savage injury)? Or will frustration and impatience take over?

Williams' career has been strangely turbulent. Even a couple of business ventures struck troubled waters, and he was granted one of those infamous breaks by the NZRU's sabbatical department which, in his case, was for entrepreneurial tourism rather than a working rugby holiday. By the old standards of rugby dedication, you could conclude that he was a touch distracted.

A failing body might now mean he has to develop a new rugby mind. A guide might be the Springbok superstar Victor Matfield, arguably the finest lineout forward in the history of rugby.

Matfield has a unique lineout ability on his team's ball and on opponents' ball, yet is not exactly a powerhouse or dynamo around the field. Matfield more than simply survives by using his intelligent reading of the game. He turns up enough where needed, and has flourished to the point of being the pivotal performer in triumphant World Cup and Super 14 sides.

Williams may need to be less gung-ho, more the savvy professional.

A leg having failed, a new brain will need to take over. With a thirst for new challenges, he might even relish the prospect.