I'm a cog in the wheel, says Sonny
Jamie Pandaram | August 14, 2007
The Herald's Colonial First State Performer of the Week
It seemed as though the Bulldogs had an unfair advantage against the Raiders: Sonny Bill Williams played like a souped-up high-performance machine against rusty bicycles, leaving the opposition coughing on dust.
Williams's magical 59-minute league lesson has earned him the Herald's Performer of the Week award. He scored three tries, made 131 metres from 17 runs, had three offloads, three line breaks and 21 tackles on Sunday as the Dogs inflicted the second-biggest defeat in Canberra's 25 years with a 52-4 thrashing.
Just how Williams squeezed all of that in less than an hour is a frightening mystery. Yet as with all plaudits thrown his way, the humble 22-year-old Kiwi international yesterday deflected the attention from himself as capably as he avoids a tackle.
"I was happy with how I played but it was just one of those games where everyone in the team played really well," Williams said. "I might have got three tries but that's mainly because the guys around me were able to get me into one-on-one situations with a defender.
"Guys like Chris Armit, Jon Green, Fred Briggs, Corey Hughes and Adam Perry, who played in the second row, hardly ever get a mention but it's a team effort and they all had great games."
But Williams was clearly a level above anybody else on the Telstra Stadium turf; with superior strength, skill and spirit.
Teammates could only shake their heads in amazement as Williams scored the third try of his first NRL hat-trick, running around and through the Raiders defence as though he was playing in an under-10s match.
"What he did in 60 minutes of football is pretty freakish," Dogs lock Reni Maitua said yesterday. "I just can't imagine what it would've been like if he was out there for the full 80 [minutes].
"He is one of our game-breakers, he is a very important part of our team and he's really stood up over the last six weeks with players being out. As a back-rower he still tops the hit-ups, tackles, so coming into the finals he is going to be a big part of our side and we need him to keep doing what he's doing."
Williams is the club's leading try-scorer this season and has an impressive strike rate of 13 from 17 games. He also leads the competition for offloads (56), and with three rounds remaining in the regular season, he has already surpassed his efforts from last year in tries, tackles, line-break assists and try assists.
As is the way with the Bulldogs, however, nobody - including Williams himself - was keen to lay all the credit with one player.
"It's not a one-man team," Maitua said. "There is class all over the park, especially when we've got a full team. We're not a Newcastle without Andrew Johns, we've got a team that can win it."
Captain Andrew Ryan provided a bit of a reality check. "He is a great player," Ryan said. "A side like Canberra, their defence wasn't that good [on Sunday], he sort of picked and chose when he ran and scored tries so it was a pretty good performance. Without being too disrespectful to Canberra, they were pretty ordinary. Their defence … very ordinary."
The infinitely shy Williams even struggled to take compliments from his teammates, Maitua said.
"He is pretty reserved, he's a pretty humble kid," Maitua said. "You try and say 'Congrats' and that and he sort of laughs it off, [and says] 'Thanks bro'.
"He's got a bit of that Kiwi shyness in him, he's just really humble. That's what makes him a better bloke as well. He hasn't got a big head, he doesn't go out there acting like an idiot. He just takes it on board and looks forward to the next week."
As a concerned skipper, Ryan hinted he might also be having a quiet word to Williams about his taking it easy against the Broncos on Friday night, saying: "For me, I'm on the other side of the field so I just want to get the ball to our side, so I was filthy they kept going [Williams's] way."
