The Leicester flanker, who moved to England from Zimbabwe with the aim of playing Test rugby, has recovered from a recurring arm injury and hopes to catch Eddie Jones’ eye once again
Leicester will, for the first time this decade, play a match without Richard Cockerill sitting in the stand and becoming increasingly animated when they face Wasps in Coventry on Sunday. It is his spirit – after being fired as the club’s director of rugby this week – the players will invoke as they look to repair an unhappy opening to the new year.
“We have a chance to make a statement against Wasps and put in a performance to make Cockers proud,” says Leicester’s Zimbabwe-born flanker, Mike Williams, who was this month named in England’s squad. “He brought me to Leicester [from Worcester] and I became really close to him. It was not nice to hear that he had gone, a pill that was all the more difficult to swallow because in my career I had never come across anyone who was so dedicated to a club or whose mental toughness so inspired you to reach his level. I will certainly keep in touch with him.
“These things happen and as a player you have to get on with it. We have been up and down this season but I do not think it is down to a change in playing style. The difference in our home and away form is something we have been looking at for a while and we are changing a few things. We know we are a good side and we have to prove it against Wasps.”
Williams said suggestions the players had had enough of Cockerill – who has joined Toulon as a consultant – and launched an uprising against him were laughable. “Anyone who had seen us against Saracens last Sunday would not have gained the impression that we were a side not playing for the top man. There was no revolt: we gave it everything against a team who won the double last season and, in the end, it came down to the finest of margins. That is the attitude we have to take with us to Wasps.”
As Cockerill was being told that his contract was being terminated, Williams was on his way to Brighton to join the England squad for a two-day training camp. The 25-year-old, whose first season at Leicester was disrupted by a broken arm – sustained in the warm-up before the match against his former club Worcester – was called up by Eddie Jones last August, but played no part in the autumn internationals after fracturing the same arm for a third time at the beginning of October.
“I was surprised when I was picked in the squad last week because I had had so little game time,” says Williams, who left Zimbabwe aged 19. and He spent four years in South Africa, playing for the Sharks and the Bulls, before moving to England, the country his maternal grandfather left during the second world war to emigrate to what was then Rhodesia. “It showed the faith Eddie has in me and I aim to repay him.
“It was tough training after playing on the Sunday, but I was so glad to be there and felt humbled by the call-up. We looked at France [England’s first Six Nations opponents] in detail, what we can expect from them and how we will play to our strengths.
“I hope the problem with my arm is sorted out now: I had a plate and screws inserted after the original break but they caused the next two fractures. I have seen a specialist who recommended bone medication and it has worked so far.”
Jones mentioned Williams, an abrasive, dynamic forward, in his first interviews after taking charge of England at the end of 2015, seeing a potential openside in a player who has spent most of his career on the blindside. On Sunday, Williams may come up against James Haskell, who was England’s first-choice No7 for the Six Nations and Australia tour before he suffered an injury. Haskell is set to make his first appearance of the season from the bench.
“It would be good to test myself against him,” says Williams. “The way Eddie sets up his team makes the number on your back largely irrelevant. His gameplan is about fronting up, getting in opponents’ faces and being physical. Six has been my position [he was also deployed in the second row by Worcester] but it is all about fitting into the system and I have three games for Leicester this month to show that I am worthy of playing in the Six Nations.”
Williams arrived in England with the ambition of playing Test rugby. “I qualify through my mother’s side of the family who were from Sussex,” he says. “I was in South Africa for five years and was picked in their under-20 squad without getting any game time, but the first three did not count for residential qualification because I had been on a student visa.
“I asked my agent to put out feelers in England because I knew I was qualified to represent them and Richard Hill signed me. He left Worcester soon after and I learned a lot from his successor, Dean Ryan, in an enjoyable two years at the club. Then Cockers spotted me.
“I would like to return to Zimbabwe at the end of my career. My father runs an engineering company and my parents live just outside Harare. The country has been through some tough times, but things seem to be coming right, if slowly.
“Last year was the first when I did not return home and it is difficult living there with what American dollars there are in the country tending to be spent in South Africa where there are more goods, but for the moment my concern is about showing Eddie Jones that he was right to pick me.”-Guardian
