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Sonny Bill Williams: 'I felt I played like a rugby union player playing rugby league'

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Sonny Bill Williams has urged Toronto fans to stick with the team despite the Wolfpack starting their maiden English Super League season with back-to-back defeats.

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The promoted Canadian outfit were beaten 28-10 in their first match by Castleford eight days ago and conceded two late tries to go down 24-16 to Salford in round two on Saturday.

“I think as a team we’re definitely improving, which is the main thing,” Williams told Toronto’s Twitter feed.

“Last week there was a lot of what you could say were mistakes but we looked at it as learnings.

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WATCH: Sonny Bill Williams speaks at a press conference alongside Toronto Wolfpack head coach Brian McDermott and chief executive Bob Hunter following his move to the Super League newcomers.

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“We went out there and fixed a lot of wrongs but still fell short, just in those big moments the lads will agree we didn’t quite nail it. It was a massive improvement but there’s always some more learnings to do.

“Stay with us because, although we haven’t got the results in the last two weeks, we are building.

“I’ve been part of a lot of franchises and a lot of clubs and the chemistry within this team is right up there so we’ll keep working hard and hopefully we start stringing some wins together.”

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The former All Black ended a five-and-a-half-year spell away from the league in last week’s match at Headingley and, after starting Saturday’s game, believes he is getting to grips with the code once more.

“Last week I was happy to get out there and get some minutes under my belt but I felt I played like a rugby union player playing rugby league. But this week I felt like a league player with rugby skills. I’m happy with how it went.”

The Wolfpack will look to get off the mark when coach Brian McDermott takes his team to Wigan on Thursday but Williams will be absent, having been given prearranged leave to fly back to New Zealand for the birth of his fourth child.

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“I’m looking forward to doing that,” he said.

“I’m grateful to Mac and the club for allowing me to go back.”

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J
Jon 9 hours ago
Jake White: Are modern rugby players actually better?

This is the problem with conservative mindsets and phycology, and homogenous sports, everybody wants to be the same, use the i-win template. Athlete wise everyone has to have muscles and work at the gym to make themselves more likely to hold on that one tackle. Do those players even wonder if they are now more likely to be tackled by that player as a result of there “work”? Really though, too many questions, Jake. Is it better Jake? Yes, because you still have that rugby of ole that you talk about. Is it at the highest International level anymore? No, but you go to your club or checkout your representative side and still engage with that ‘beautiful game’. Could you also have a bit of that at the top if coaches encouraged there team to play and incentivized players like Damian McKenzie and Ange Capuozzo? Of course we could. Sadly Rugby doesn’t, or didn’t, really know what direction to go when professionalism came. Things like the state of northern pitches didn’t help. Over the last two or three decades I feel like I’ve been fortunate to have all that Jake wants. There was International quality Super Rugby to adore, then the next level below I could watch club mates, pulling 9 to 5s, take on the countries best in representative rugby. Rugby played with flair and not too much riding on the consequences. It was beautiful. That largely still exists today, but with the world of rugby not quite getting things right, the picture is now being painted in NZ that that level of rugby is not required in the “pathway” to Super Rugby or All Black rugby. You might wonder if NZR is right and the pathway shouldn’t include the ‘amateur’, but let me tell you, even though the NPC might be made up of people still having to pull 9-5s, we know these people still have dreams to get out of that, and aren’t likely to give them. They will be lost. That will put a real strain on the concept of whether “visceral thrill, derring-do and joyful abandon” type rugby will remain under the professional level here in NZ. I think at some point that can be eroded as well. If only wanting the best athlete’s at the top level wasn’t enough to lose that, shutting off the next group, or level, or rugby players from easy access to express and showcase themselves certainly will. That all comes back around to the same question of professionalism in rugby and whether it got things right, and rugby is better now. Maybe the answer is turning into a “no”?

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