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I smell a rat with this Sonny Bill Williams back-flip: he’s unavailable for the Rugby League World Cup – what a shame. Then he is suddenly back and raring to go again – yay – after a sudden change of mind and dare I say, heart.
Sonny Bill Williams scored a heap of publicity in the past season for his celebrated ‘handshake’ deal with Roosters’ boss Nick Politis.
We were told that is why he left the Waikato Chiefs in Super Rugby to honour an agreement he made with Politis many moons ago.
Well, he certainly got to the Roosters after a rugby stint in Japan and a boxing bout somewhere or other.
And yes, he had a wonderful season in which he iced the cake with a devastating 20 minute display in the NRL grand final to steal the thunder from likely winners, Manly.
Our eyes then turned immediately to the league’s World Cup. Would the superstar, superhuman Williams be turning out for the Kiwis, even though he was being seriously courted by the Chiefs to make a return to Super Rugby?
“No thanks, I am unavailable,” said the player the sycophantic types at Channel Nine all-but call ‘The Great Man’.
Well, I might be old fashioned but saying ‘no’ to the World Cup was The Great Man’s Word, his own personal gospel, and I thought that would be that. The Kiwi team was duly picked and contained the name of Melbourne’s exciting young back-rower Tohu Harris.
I thought: OK, Harris is a big talent on the rise. He gets his chance because Williams had ruled himself out of contention.
But no! The Great Man suddenly feels like a spot of RL WC action. He claims he made up his mind way too early.
Sorry, but it does not wash with me. There is a distinct smell of rodent here and I don’t like it, not even a skerrick.
Williams, we were told, is a man of his word. That handshake deal was honoured and he duly turned up at Bondi Junction pending an OK to his contract by the NRL.
I suspect that SBW really didn’t want to play in league’s World Cup because he had a boxing thingy coming up in the off-season, as well as a rugby club to re-join.
My guess – an educated guess – is that Sonny Bill’s manager Khoder Nasser had a fair bit to do with this controversial about-face.
Maybe the boxing thingy wasn’t going to come off, or wasn’t as lucrative as first thought. Perhaps the manager saw more dollars to be made by parading his star client at league’s World Cup for a month or so.
I’d like to place a call and put it squarely on the manager but that would prove to be a serious waste of time and energy.
I have dealt with Khoder Nasser many times in the past when I was exec-producer of a sports radio show.
I could never say that Nasser’s word was his bond. He changed liked the wind and was as reliable as the proverbial two-bob watch.
He made numerous promises that were not kept; probably never were going to be kept, once made.
I can reveal I never liked dealing with this character. It was smoke and mirrors with him all the way and I cannot believe that an athlete of Sonny Bill’s vast abilities ran with him then, and is still doing so now.
When all is said and done re SBW and League’s World Cup, I predict we will one day read a story that the player did not want to compete and had his mind ‘changed’ well after the deadline by his manager.
It is all very well to say that the tournament will be better for SBW’s presence and that his contribution for New Zealand League will be immense. But I truly believe that Williams is a good and genuine person, a man of his word, and that he’ll be hurting because of this very public back-flip, more than likely engineered by manager Nasser.
As fellow Roarer Ryan O’Connell wrote here yesterday, this controversy will probably be long forgotten by the time the World Cup gets underway.
But it won’t be forgotten by this writer and many other followers of the code.
The about-face by SBW reeks. And I firmly believe the resultant character assassinations have not been of his own doing.
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