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Williams vows to return

Injured All Blacks and Blues lock Ali Williams was vehement in his stance that his career was not finished as the result of a second Achilles tendon rupture when speaking at the Blues team announcement in Auckland on Wednesday night.

Thursday, 11 February 2010

Sportal.co.nz

Injured All Blacks and Blues lock Ali Williams was vehement in his stance that his career was not finished as the result of a second Achilles tendon rupture when speaking at the Blues team announcement in Auckland on Wednesday night.

"There's no way I'm finished, hell no. I'm as keen as," he said.

Already targeting a return to rugby for Auckland in the Air New Zealand Cup starting in August, Williams, who is to have a support role with the Blues side, said the more research that was done about the second rupture, the more it showed that it was something only waiting to happen.

Williams did say that his first rupture was caused by rotting of the Achilles while the second rupture was in a different spot and there had been no correlation between the two.

It was found, after the second incident that a bone spur was growing out of the bottom of his heel which was pushing on the tendon and under enough tension it was always going to snap.

"The bone spur is gone, I got rid of him," he quipped.

"My dream is still alive, which is obviously to play for the Blues more hopefully next year, and obviously be part of the All Blacks in that bigger dream which is the World Cup and basically just playing rugby," he said.

"The first pre-season [game], I was pretty pumped to get into it, I was excited, I was keen but it was cut short which is pretty frustrating.

"From the negative comes the positive, I don't know what it is yet but I will find it and move on."

Explaining the injury, which occurred three minutes into his first game, a warm-up clash against the Chiefs, he said: "I thought someone had shot me with a shotgun, I thought 'What a cheeky bugger, he could have at least been on the knoll and done it through the crosshairs but he didn't, he got a shotgun and wooshka on the back.

"It was so loud I thought someone had kicked me. Me being me I turned round to abuse someone and there was no-one there to abuse so I knew exactly what had happened and later saw that it had ruptured completely," he said.

Williams is enthusiastic about the potential of the Blues side this year, there was a lot of talent and he was keen to assist in the nurturing of the team, and said he had especially enjoyed the training regime with the team, adding that he had forgotten what it was like to go through the complete exercise as he had done since December.

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