All Blacks: A little help from his friend

Sonny Bill Williams, (L), credits Ma'a Nonu with taking him under his wing and teaching him the tricks of the trade. Photo / Getty Images

For the first time all tour, Sonny Bill Williams looked embarrassed.

Embarrassed by his starting selection for the game that will decide a Grand Slam; embarrassed about his elevation over his mate Ma'a Nonu; embarrassed by the attention.

"I've always said that the more game time I get the better player I will become, but in saying that I know that I'm not the number-one 12 in the country," Williams said. "I know Ma'a Nonu is and what they're doing is giving me a bit more time out there to find my feet a bit more.

"It's not about me being selected in front of Ma'a, it's about me getting more game time to try to improve as a player."

Very noble, humble sentiments - if they were true.

"The team's been selected on form on the tour," coach Graham Henry emphasised. "Ma'a Nonu has been one of the backbone members of the side for some time and he hasn't been selected in the XV for this game because Sonny Bill Williams is playing a wee bit better right now."

If Williams is not quite on the same page as his coach, we can cut him some slack. He might have been a superstar in Sydney during his days with the Bulldogs, but he has been blown away by the amount of people who seem willing to hang off his every word.

"The first time I came to one of these things there were so many people, so many questions," he said. "Like anything, you get used to it."

He described his first week on tour as feeling like an "extra" walking among the stars, but the interest in his progress was never going to allow him to fade into the background.

"I'm a lot more confident. When I know what's going on game plan-wise, it gives me a lot more confidence to express myself the way I want to."

Part of that ability to soak up rugby knowledge and the All Black way of playing again comes back to the man he's replaced.

"He's a good man, Ma'a. He's really taken me under his wing and I've learned a lot, more from him than anyone else on this tour, and he knows he's the number-one 12 in the country and he's happy for me to get some more experience.

"He's been there and done that."

It is true that the two midfielders have gravitated towards each other on this tour and the coaches have said that they have been pleased with the way Nonu and Conrad Smith, who will start at centre outside Williams tomorrow, have integrated the rugby novice into the systems.

But you can't do it without a lot of talent.

Williams has come further on the field than even the coaches imagined when he caught their eye playing for Toulon. They would admit, too, that he's still got a long way to go off the field. It's not that he's lazy or a troublemaker, far from it, but the culture of self-sufficiency they have tried to instil among their players was not a part of the high-performance league world Williams was involved in.

Still, that offload will win a lot of friends and influence people.

Whether he gets the chance to display it against Wales remains to be seen but coach Warren Gatland will do well to copy the Irish approach to defending Williams, while using the Scotland game as a "What Not To Do" video.

When Williams came on for the last 20 minutes against Ireland the defence rushed up in his face. Three times he was forced to pass before contact and behind the advantage line, exactly the opposite of the latitude he was given against Scotland.

"We've spoken about him. The Scottish players probably gave a little too much respect," Gatland said. "At this level you can't afford to identify one player as a threat because they've ended up committing two, sometimes three players to him and he's ended up with the offload out the back and it's created space for the All Blacks to score tries."

The Williams experiment has been a qualified success that could reap rich rewards next year.

And if he thinks the attention he's getting now is over the top, he'd better buckle in for next October.