A heartfelt apology to Nick Williams

[thegreenlantern]

Againstthehead your of your feckin head

[Kofi Annan]

A fat nick is twice the man of a fit nick

[CIMANFOREVER]

Actually thought Nick was a liability tonight. Bit like the Munster game. His potential is staggering but he gave too much ball away in contact and was poor at the back of the scrum.

Kinda frustrating - on the verge of amazing but also on the verge of crap. On the whole, he's been brilliant and adds a real venom and power that we were missing. Needs to play a few more percentages.

Agree ATH apart from the brilliant bit. Too many rose tinted specs on here. If that was a tight HEC game, we'd be kicking him up and down the Cregagh Road.. No way Wilson would've lost control at the back with such a dominant scrum. That happened at least twice this season in matches where our 8 were destroying the opposition. To get up from a scrum, and see the ball squirt out or Williams get isolated due to getting left behind would make my blood boil if I was front five... there's also a time for one-handed off loads, and a time to take the hit and the pain.. Williams cant differentiate either... Against more physical packs like Northampton and Castres, when a score could decide it, he'll be a liability.. sorry to deviate from the adoring masses.. Watch the difference Wilson makes behind such a dominant 8, in terms of scrum penalties and possibly Penalty tries.. some of his handling and poor scrummaging 8 play took the gloss of an superb, emotional win for me.

[Snipe Watson]

By the way Snipe, I would hazard a guess that the huge majority of "Oh no, not Fat Nick" posters were not querying his talent but his ability to slip in a sick note for weeks on end.

Injury prone was mentioned, but fat and useless was the general theme. Having said that, it was just the usual bandwagon jumping from idiots.

[CIMANFOREVER]

Actually thought Nick was a liability tonight.

Congratulations Against, you win. 1st Prize for the single stupidest post today, any time you see a Welsh TV channel give man of the match to the enemy that man has most certainly not been a liability.

Maybe sleep on it and come back and edit your post tomorrow, waddya think?

Baggy, welcome back, but bullsh*t. Cardiff were awful... against a good side, we could've turned over at least two tries and threw away a couple of penalty tries or 3 pointers from scrum dominance due to NW's tactically inept play.. when he gets it right, I agree, he can be outstanding, but he often gets it as wrong.. can we afford a 50% ratio of turning ball over, misfiring at the back of a dominant scrum etc.? when the going gets tough against the big guns? His power will be negated to a greater extent.. so far he's looked good against Glasgow, Ospreys, Cardiff, less so against a powerful Munster side bereft of a good few of its first choice pack...hardly the cream of Europe..

[ulsterrr]

Haven't watched game yet just the tries but When we signed him my thought's were this could be the one Humphs got it wrong. Believe it or not Humphs will get one wrong at some point and when he does I wont care!

Williams is a star! Signing of the year potential. Also for those saying too many knock on when someone has the ability to carry in one hand and offload at any moment during any tackle a few knock on's are expected even permitted. The only thing he can be faulted on is his control at back of scrums.

His pass to Bowe in build up to Allen try was something Sonny Bill Williams would be proud of!

[ulsterrr]

Also he is only on a two year contract... Time to extend yet?

[Kofi Annan]

By the way Snipe, I would hazard a guess that the huge majority of "Oh no, not Fat Nick" posters were not querying his talent but his ability to slip in a sick note for weeks on end.

Injury prone was mentioned, but fat and useless was the general theme. Having said that, it was just the usual bandwagon jumping from idiots.

Snipe, remind me again, who said he was useless?

[BaggyTrousers]

Actually thought Nick was a liability tonight.

Congratulations Against, you win. 1st Prize for the single stupidest post today, any time you see a Welsh TV channel give man of the match to the enemy that man has most certainly not been a liability.

Maybe sleep on it and come back and edit your post tomorrow, waddya think?

Maybe watch the game again baggers. His contact skills were atrocious. He must have knocked the ball on about 4-5 times. Unforgivable. In addition, his control behind the scrum for a dominant pack was pathetic.

You might be impressed by running around with the ball in one mit but I am not. Against a top side, he could well have cost us the match.

Don't get me wrong - I love watching the guy - he's pure rugby gold but in the last 2 games he has made too many basic errors. Indeed, he made a hatfulf of errors V Munster and we just about got away with it. He just needs to reign in his enthusiasm a tad and play a little more as a team-player. He also tends to go off on the rampage with no support and can get isolated on the floor. He is so very close to being our stand-out player and indeed, perhaps he is. However, with a little more upstairs he could be one of the players of the season.

Against, what you are describing is a man who was in a dominant pack and decided he was in a position to take a few chances & make things happen. I winced once or twice at him donate the ball to Cardiff but when you look on his overall game "liability" I'm afraid is just a ludicrous assessment, much as I understand your finer points.

Tonight we recognised that Cardiff's pack were there for the taking, we took them & for the first time this season we took the majority of chances we had. Some of that has to be down to a more cavalier attitude with possession that was in stark contrast to our previous three games where we had to work furiously hard for a try.

Overall, I agree with your last few sentences above.

CIMAN, again I agree with a lot of your assessment but once again point up that Ulster were massively on top of a poor Cardiff pack and played a more high risk game than you would expect in an HC balltightener.

Then you posted again and all I can say is thank you for the welcome back, but alas the rest of that post is .....bullshit Keep in mind that nowhere did I say Fat Nick was flawless but if you take a balance of his performance & agree he was a liability then I'm sorry but your just wrong.

[ruckover]

Give a lot of credit to the medics at UR that manage to keep him on the field for 80mins as well. Any other team he'd probably have a season-long injury by now.

[Snipe Watson]

By the way Snipe, I would hazard a guess that the huge majority of "Oh no, not Fat Nick" posters were not querying his talent but his ability to slip in a sick note for weeks on end.

Injury prone was mentioned, but fat and useless was the general theme. Having said that, it was just the usual bandwagon jumping from idiots.

Snipe, remind me again, who said he was useless?

Can't remember and no intention of looking back to check.

[Rooster]

Give a lot of credit to the medics at UR that manage to keep him on the field for 80mins as well. Any other team he'd probably have a season-long injury by now.

It's probably JD who has managed to keep him going for 80 mins more than the medics, fitness was always his problem and if you are not fit you get injured easier. That was always an issue with Nick over the years and why some of us had reservations about his signing, when fit he is class but when he hits the beer and burgers then he is average and not fit and that has been his problem throughout his career. I'm glad he is once again in the fit category and thus playing the way he does and long may it continue that way.

[CIMANFOREVER]

Bags, on balance against a poor Cardiff side, yes, he was in credit- two tries are hard to argue. My point is, can he/ will he play in the big games from the start when we need to turn the screw/ batten down the hatches? In my opinion, no.. Wilson will start- steady, strong, and a good scrummaging no.8 to maximise our scrum dominance. NW as, excuse the Cliche, an "Oh, F*ck, not him now" impact player after 60-65 mins- yes, as long as we're more than 5 points behind, and look out of it...or chasing a bonus point whilst comfortably ahead.. I don't want to see him coming on the playing Ben Hur role at the back of the scrum, with us either one point up or down against Saints in the HEC with 2 mins left on the clock tbh.. my point was that he will be a liability playing fast and loose against better teams, not poor sides like Glasgow, Cardiff, etc. as I already said.. so there...
It is a nice problem to have, however.

[Tizzle]

The man is a freak of nature and great to watch at times.

Sometimes he doesn't look like a team player though - just wants to keep the ball and see how many people he can steam roll.

Steam rolling is good until the ball is lost...

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

[Bart S]

Suspect when Nick Williams was signed he was expected to boost our Rabo challenge, with Wilson, Henry and 1F forming the 1st choice Heiny back row.

At the very least NW has shown that he can be a destructive player in the Rabo outside our 1st chocie back row, something which we were lacking last season and one of the reasons our Rabo challenge fell away badly towards the end of the season.