KEY POINTS:
He's the most famous dog in football but Toulon will wonder if they've been sold a pup.
Kiwi Sonny Bill Williams' paltry appearance rate in his overrated footy career is about to drop further, with the news that he has a hairline fracture of the right fibula.
Former
Canterbury Bulldog Williams, who chose a league World Cup year to crawl out on the club and sport that nurtured his considerable talent, might be sidelined from French club rugby for a month, we are told.
And the cracks are reappearing not only in Williams' body. The tent might soon collapse on Tana Umaga's circus because Toulon's owner, a comic-book king, has found that his superheroes are all tights and no great results on the ladder.
What a pleasure it would be to watch this house of cards collapse around coach Umaga, who arrogantly tempted Williams out of a perfectly legal contract while rugby fawned over the young pretender.
There is even a media report that Umaga is in danger of the sack after a one-win-from-three start against weak opponents. What Umaga may find is that rich and powerful men - especially those with Latin temperaments - aren't rich and powerful by cool heads alone. Those same smiling sugar daddies turn wild when they've spent millions upon millions and suddenly fear they have been taken for an ego-busting ride.
Toulon's owner, Mourad Boudjellal, is staring at expensive battlers while a player he was persuaded to drool over is cooling his expensive heels.
Williams' hit rate in league was being fit enough for just 60 per cent of the Bulldogs matches while still being widely feted by a game too desperate for heroes.
Some of his injuries were caused by a love of big-noting big-hitting that put his joints and limbs at risk, a no-arms tackling technique that saw him dismissed in his rugby union debut.
He may be the first league player to have greatness bestowed upon him for helping to wreck a club. He even talked about his desire to become an All Black during the lead-up to a Kiwi league test. What an idiot.
What does this latest setback in a long list of injuries for this 23-year-old big-head really mean?
For a start, the rugby education of Sonny has been set back even further, not that he was going to learn much from an opportunist like Umaga.
You have only to look at top-level New Zealand players, with tutors far more qualified than Umaga, to know how difficult the art of rugby has apparently become. For every Richie McCaw and Dan Carter, there are a fleet of others who can't catch, pass, tackle or burrow for the ball properly despite being full-time professionals.
Heading off to a flash-in-the-pan French club, under a novice cheque-book waving coach, was hardly the sensible approach if the real calling for the Williams code switch was, as was claimed, to be an All Black.
If the black jersey was his motivating force, then Williams should have followed the lead of Brad Thorn, who headed straight to rugby's finest educators, in Christchurch, twice, when he quit league.
Had Williams forsaken the big money for rugby knowledge, he might have also had his body prepared properly by the Crusader machine, rather than hobnobbing it around Europe with Umaga's band of merry men.
Now we are told that All Black coach Graham Henry might touch base with Williams, even though he is ineligible as an All Black for now. Henry had better book a flexible ticket because who knows where Sonny Bill's base will be in a few months' time.
But if he does make it there, Henry might give Jerry Collins - a renowned rugby player who hurled his body into 48 tests - a more decent adieu than he managed a couple of months ago.
This latest Sonny Bill injury is an enormous laugh for those of us who regard him a traitor to the last vestiges of decency in the money-obsessed world of sport.
For the star of a club, the highest-paid player in the joint, to sneak out on teammates and fans midseason - while spouting a lot of woe-is-me nonsense as an excuse - is an act from the sewer.
To be fair, Henry would be a fool to slam the door shut on a player with such obvious ability, even if it is usually cased in bandages and comes with the maturity you'd find on a pre-schoolers' walking bus.
But making contact with an injury-wrecked man-child who has played only a couple of rugby games is a different matter, especially for an All Black team that supposedly operates on the "better human beings make better footballers" credo.
Let's face it though - the NZRU is a desperate outfit which is banking on poster boys. And it's so easy to offend Sonny Bill - failing to fall at his feet could send him running off to Chelsea to pursue a newfound lifelong ambition to become a soccer star.
The All Blacks should think long and hard before they let Williams and his entourage of knuckleheads into their camp.
Then again, SBW and his rippling bod is highly marketable. He could easily be sold as the star that he isn't in Denver and Hong Kong, where they wouldn't know the difference between Mr McCaw and Mr Magoo.