Ali Williams' Spider-Man routine this week wasn't exactly a hit with his former teammates at the Blues.
Williams fronted the media on Monday dressed in a Spider-Man suit and avoided questions about a potential grudge match against the team that dumped him for ill discipline last year.
"Iam just here to try and help out more than anything," Williams/Spider-Man said. "I don't want to be a hero."
He probably didn't want to be the centre of attention either, although adopting a superhero persona, right down to the skin-tight suit, is a strange way of going about avoiding the spotlight.
As an exercise in evasive weirdness, Williams' performance was right up there with Eric Cantona's "seagulls follow trawlers because they expect sardines to be thrown" explanation for karate kicking a spectator.
Isa Nacewa said it was a pretty bad look for Williams, while good mate Troy Flavell speculated that he must have lost a bet.
Flavell said there was no bad blood between Williams and the Blues and he would greet his former locking partner with nothing more vicious than a "rub on the head" if the opportunity arose at the bottom of a ruck.
Blues coach David Nucifora, though, the man who somewhat ironically sent Williams home from South Africa last year for being a distraction, wasn't laughing.
"We don't dress up, we'll just get on with our business," said Nucifora when asked if he was tempted to wear his underpants on the outside of his trousers. "For us it is an important game of football that we've got to win. If we were to let ourselves be distracted by people dressing up in Spider-Man suits then we'd be going down the wrong path."
Nucifora said he had not spoken to Williams since he left the Blues for a one-year deal with Tasman and the Crusaders and he had no plans to have a beer and a chat with him after tonight's match.
"I don't do that with anyone else so I don't see any reason to do it with him."
