Loyalty pays off for Williams
Commitment to SuperSports nets keeper 5-year deal
SuperSport United goalkeeper Ronwen Williams is delighted that he doesn’t have to answer questions about his future anymore.
The 25-year-old has for the past few months been linked with Orlando Pirates, but signing a new five-year contract with Matsatsantsa-a-Pitori has ended all speculation.
“I’m very happy at this club and it ends all speculation about my future, because I’ve been getting a lot of calls about Pirates and all these [other] teams,” Williams told Sowetan yesterday.
“I’ve extended for five years [and] hopefully, I can stay longer than that.”
Meanwhile, SuperSport chief executive officer Stanley Matthews said Williams’s new deal owes to the goalie’s commitment to the club over the years.
“This is the first time we have given a player a straight fiveyear deal and Ronwen deserves it.
“He has worked his way through the ranks from the age of 12 putting in many years of hard work in our academy and now in our first team,” Matthews added.
The Port Elizabeth-born keeper is the longest-serving member of the squad, having started out with the club’s juniors in 2005.
He was promoted to the senior team in the 2011/2012 campaign when he raked up 24 league starts on debut season.
Williams has started 202 games in the domestic league, with increasing appearances in African club competitions.
Williams credited the club’s goalkeeping department for his success, saying SuperSport has one of the best goalkeeping departments in the Premier Soccer League.
“We’ve got four quality keepers here – Reyaad [Pieterse], Boalefa Pule, who’s part of the Bafana team [at the Cosafa Cup] and we have Mondli Mpoto, who’s with the under-20s and he went to the World Cup,” Williams said
“All of us are young and the oldest is Pule, who is 27. We learn from each other every day [and] we push each other.”