A GAME TO FORGET, DENTIST DARRIL IS

Darril Williams runs in to score a try for Llanelli against Newport in 1998.

THE legendary South African captain Bennie Osler once said: “There can be no more thrilling experience for the Springbok rugby player than to oppose Wales in an international.

“It is more than just a grimly fought game.

“It’s a searching trial of emotion, nerves and physical courage.”

The ode to Welsh resolve resurfaced in the matchday programme for the South Africa v Wales game in Pretoria almost exactly 22 years ago. The words hadn’t aged well. Fifteen tries were run through the Welsh defence that day as the visitors fell to the heaviest defeat in their history. It was 33-6 at half-time and 9613 at the end. Anyone counting the missed tackles from the red-clad players that day would have had the toughest job in the stadium.

Nerves were only twanged in the final seconds when the men in myrtle green shirts were going for a hundred points. Would they get there or not? Well, had hooker Naka Drotske held on to a simple pass, three figures would have been posted and Welsh humiliation would have been complete.

This writer still remembers being told in the press box by a South African journalist that day: “You’ve got a s**t rugby team.”

If it wasn’t much fun being a Welsh scribe at Loftus Versfeld, imagine how it felt to be a young player making his Wales debut.

And so to Darril Williams, a young man from Pontarddulais. Just 22 at the time, with barely a season of topflight rugby behind him.

Then one of Welsh rugby’s brightest prospects, with skill and serious gas over 40 metres, he had looked a proper player in the making, one capable of sticking around on the Test scene for a long time.

He had been told the tour would aid his development as a rugby player. But injuries meant he was thrust into the Test picture.

The then Llanelli player, who is these days a dentist in Mumbles, sadly didn’t have a chance to play for his country again. “It was a strange old time,” recalls the former Ysgol Gyfun Gwyr pupil.

“I had only been on the scene with Llanelli for five minutes and here I was sitting on the bench in Loftus Versfeld preparing to go on for Wales against South Africa.

“Kevin Bowring had been Wales’s coach that season and he’d asked if I’d be available for the tour. He pitched it as a good stepping stone in my development.

“But then a lot of things started happening in quick succession.

Darril Williams is now a dentist in Mumbles.