Wales's record try scorer and the five foot seven winger who refused to be too small
RugbyFor most of Shane Williams's career, people could not decide whether he was too small to play international rugby or too brilliant to leave out.
Born in Morriston in 1977 and raised in the Amman Valley, Williams was told throughout his early career that at 5ft 7in and barely 12 stone he did not have the frame for Test rugby. He spent the early 2000s in and out of the Wales side before an explosive 2005 Grand Slam campaign turned him into one of the most feared wingers in the world game.
Over the next seven years he scored 58 Test tries for Wales, a national record that still stands, and added four more for the British and Irish Lions. He was named IRB World Rugby Player of the Year in 2008, the only Welshman ever to receive the award, after a season in which he scored six tries in the Grand Slam winning Six Nations campaign and was unplayable in every Test he started.
His three Grand Slams with Wales, his 2005 Lions tour to New Zealand, and his decisive try in the 2011 Rugby World Cup pool match against Samoa all belong to the highlight reel of a career that rewrote what a winger's body needed to look like. He remains one of Welsh rugby's most popular figures, a thoughtful BBC and S4C broadcaster, and a speaker who effortlessly carries a room from Ammanford to the Millennium Stadium and back.
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