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Blow for Wales as Williams ruled out for up to four months
By Online Editors
Wayne Pivac's Wales have been dealt a blow ahead of the planned return of Test rugby, scrum-half Tomos Williams needing a shoulder operation that will put him out of action for up to four months.
Williams had started for new boss Pivac in three of their four Guinness Six Nations matches earlier this year and would have been expected to feature when the delayed championship is completed on October 31 with the rearranged game versus Scotland.
However, having leapfrogged Gareth Davies, Warren Gatland's preferred No9 at last year's World Cup, in the selection pecking order, he will now likely be sidelined for the remainder of 2020 and will miss the Test rugby restart which includes the new one-off eight-team November tournament.
Williams started for Cardiff in last Saturday's Guinness PRO14 restart match but the 25-year-old's appearance was cut short early in the second half as he got injured and sat out the remainder of the 32-12 Parc Y Scarlets defeat.
The damage sustained has now been reviewed and it left Cardiff issuing a disappointing medical update on Wednesday. It read: "Tomos Williams will require surgery after suffering a shoulder injury during Saturday’s Guinness PRO14 defeat to the Scarlets.
"The Cardiff Blues and Wales scrum-half came off during the second-half at Parc y Scarlets and following specialist orthopaedic consultation, he will now undergo surgery. Williams will now be out of action for an estimated three to four months."
Williams' misfortune will likely enhance Rhys Webb's attempts to reclaim the No9 Test shirt he last wore in November 2017.
Having been excluded from selection due to his club switch to Toulon, he came back into the mix at the start of the year following his transfer back to Ospreys via a pitstop at Bath in the Premiership. That led to him appearing twice off the Six Nations bench in the matches against Italy and England, games that Williams started.
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Soccer on a rugby forum…
“Experience is strongly correlated with age, at least among the managers that I named”…
Slot and Arteta are among the youngest you named. They have the least experience as a manager (6 years each). Espírito Santo and Pep are the oldest and have the most (12 years + each). Pep is pushing 17 years experience, all at elite level. There are plenty around his age that won’t have the same level of experience. Plenty.
The younger breed you mentioned (Arteta in particular) may not coach at elite level beyond the next few years if they continue to not win trophies. Age and experience is not always a nice, steady gradient.
The only trend in English soccer is that managers don’t stay on as long with the same club. Due to the nature of the game and the assumed, immediate performance bounce of replacing them at the first sign of trouble. Knee-jerk style. Test rugby has no clear pattern of that.
Why would you dismiss a paradox? Contradictions are often revealing. Or is that too incoherent?
Go to commentsYou can’t compare the “quality”of competitions till they play against each other … what we do know is that nz teams filled with ABs and ABs can go at it with anyone in the world and these other teams and players are competing so would say the quality is high wouldn’t you? How are you determining that URC or top 14 is higher quality than Super I’m guessing you mean in the quality of players and execution ? Are you just assuming that it is because…. I would say it’s much of a muchness and the only indicator for that is international rugby and that is hella even
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