Williams to target wounded Wallabies

Reuters

TRIES: Welsh wing king Shane Williams is targeting the wounded Wallabies on Saturday as a prime source for yet more five-pointers.

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His sights firmly set on David Campese's test tryscoring record, Welsh wing king Shane Williams is targeting the wounded Wallabies on Saturday as a prime source for yet more five-pointers to add to his already massive haul.

Williams bagged a double in Wales's 33-16 victory over Argentina last Saturday to take his tally to a neat 50, joining former England speedster Rory Underwood in equal third place on Test rugby's all-time tryscorers' charts.

Although Japanese winger Daisuke Ohata holds the official world record with 69 tries, scored almost exclusively lowly-ranked Test-playing nations, Campese's 64 from 101 matches for Australia is viewed as the true benchmark.

Certainly by Williams, who is hoping to end his reign as world player of the year in style against the Wallabies.

"When you continue to look back in history to the likes of Campese, it's a massive honour for me to be mentioned alongside quality players like him," Williams said after reaching the 50-try milestone.

"It will be great to tell the children and grand children when I hang up the boots.

"But I hope number 50 was not the last of my tries as I want people to be talking about scoring my 51st and 52nd tries.

"Hopefully I get picked to face Australia and, if I score to become the greatest in the northern hemisphere, then I'll be a happy man."

There's no chance, of course, of Wales coach Warren Gatland not picking Williams, who, at 32, is showing no signs of slowing down.

"It's my job," Williams said. "I'm still enjoying myself and I'm capable of scoring even more tries.

"I want to get up to David Campese one day."

The Wallabies know from first-hand experience how deadly Williams can be.

In the corresponding fixture last year, the British and Irish Lions star completed a breathtaking try at Millennium Stadium to help Wales to a dramatic 21-18 victory which denied the Wallabies a first clean sweep of a four-Test tour of the northern hemisphere since 1996.

"He's got some crazy feet. Hopefully we can shut him down," said Wallabies centre Digby Ioane, who also scored in that Test last year while playing on the opposite wing for Australia.

"I saw his game against Argentina. He's killing them actually."

Wallabies coach Robbie Deans said the best way to stop Williams was stopping his teammates getting the ball to him.

"You've got to do it as a group because he benefits from the work of those around him," Deans said.

"If we can be effective in limiting the effectiveness of the people around him, that will make his job a lot tougher and restrict the time and space he has.

"But you don't become international player of the year easily. He's obviously a talent."

Wallabies captain Rocky Elsom said Williams was just one of Wales's many attacking threats that needed containing.

"He's definitely a quality player, but they've got a lot of them," Elsom said.

"When we played Ireland, you could probably pinpoint a few guys who were going to do the damage, whereas I feel like Wales have a lot of guys who can do a lot.

"And over here they have the runs on the board against us of late.

"We won the World Cup game (in 2007), but we haven't won another one since 2004."