Since his heroic role in the World Cup triumph Chester Williams has been plagued by injury, but he is determined to come back
RUGBY: Mick Cleary
CHESTER WILLIAMS arrived with a smile on his face. It’s a well-rehearsed facade, the image which greeted thousands of visitors to the 1995 World Cup in South Africa. Chester was the icon of the moment, the emblem of hope, reconciliation and achievement for the fledgling rainbow nation. His face was plastered over advertising hoardings across the country, captioned with the motif: “The Waiting’s Over”.
Sadly for winger Williams, and his team Western Province, the waiting is far from over. Last year was a complete write-off after he snapped anterior cruciate ligaments in his right knee. He fought back from that potentially crippling injury, one so painful that he was unable to leave his bedroom at all for the first two months. “After six months, the pain was still terrible,” he recalled.
Williams willed himself back to fitness. In the first game of this South African season he scored a hat-trick of tries. In his second game he turned unchallenged and felt a chilling sensation.
“I knew, I just knew,” he said. “This time it was my left knee. The same injury. There was no pain. I thought, `This can’t be happening to me again.’ But it was. In my heart I knew the truth. It was a shock.”
No wonder. Fate had put the boot in as cruelly as any vengeful player. Few opponents managed to stem Williams’s natural, if restrained, exuberance during the World Cup or to corral his darting menace on the field. But since those days of glory and wonder, Williams has played but a handful of matches. The man who was fted by millions, and who dined with President Mandela, has been forced to live his life in the margins, his future publicly questioned by several prominent figures in South African rugby.
But last Friday morning Chester was smiling. He had just finished his first training run in almost three months, a tentative 15-minute trot. He felt good, and the medical prognosis of his own doctor is that he might be playing by September.
Others are more sceptical. Professor Tim Noakes, one of the country’s most eminent sports scientists, declared that Williams had less than a 50% chance of a full recovery.
“What do these people really know?” says Williams. “My doctor is very positive. And so am I. I’ll show Prof Noakes. He doesn’t feel what I do. I’ll be back. It’s not a question of if but when. I have to give youngsters hope that there can be a life after injury. I’m aware of these responsibilities. People come up to me to tell me that they’re missing me. It makes me feel good and more positive than ever. It’s what they want and what I want too – to play rugby for South Africa.”
Williams is a mild character, his diffidence compounded in rugby’s essentially conservative circles by the fact that English is not his natural tongue. He can appear hesitant as he searches for the right phrase. But he knows his own mind. He was the only one of the entire South African World Cup-winning squad not to sign a contract with the South African Rugby Football Union (Sarfu) immediately afterwards.
He was the only one also not to align himself with the proposed Kerry Packer breakaway circus. He did all this on the advice of his personal manager, Frikkie Erasmus, a Cape Town attorney. “It seems now that I was right not to sign the Sarfu deal,” says Williams. “Would they be paying me now that I’m injured? Many of the guys who did sign are unhappy.”
But there are those who question the direction in which Williams has been led. In a recent magazine article the former Sarfu chief executive, Edward Griffiths, wondered why Chester had disappeared from public view. He pointed the finger at Erasmus. “Mr Erasmus has always acted in my interests and not for himself,” says Williams. However, Griffiths cited several instances of Williams’s agent requesting payment for appearances, concluding that it was no wonder that the once resonant symbol of new South Africa had dimmed so alarmingly.
There are a lot of tangled, thorny relationships in the undergrowth of South African rugby which probably explain this current bust-up. But the game still needs Chester Williams. He was such a powerful agent for change, a simple statement of possibility for one and all, no matter colour or background.
The next Chester Williams is not quite ready. Jeffrey Stevens made an impression at the World Cup Sevens in Hong Kong; Breyton Paulse was on the Springbok European winter tour. “But Breyton felt the pressure so didn’t play well,” says Williams. “The blacks and coloureds must be selected on merit. They must not be a token inclusion. It’s bad for all concerned. The player gets advice from everyone and in the end does not know himself.”
Williams seems assured about his own place in the great scheme of things. If he plays no rugby at all this season, he may ask Western Province for permission to play a winter’s season in the northern hemisphere. His soul needs the succour of competition. His bank balance might appreciate it too.
He is still, however, a draw card in the commercial market. He insists, too, that he does his bit for charity. Last Friday night, on Cape Town’s Waterfront, he sat in a caged cell in aid of the Red Nose appeal while people bid to release him. There is not one person in the country who would not want to see him take to the wing once again.