BUT ONE-CAP STILL SMILING

and was engaged in a delicate balancing act which saw him trying to keep abreast of his academic work while continuing to play top-level rugby.

In a perfect world a sabbatical from all the drilling and teeth-pulling would have been arranged, to allow him to focus properly on his sporting life until he could go back to the world of root-canal surgery full time.

But such arrangements weren’t the norm at the time. Something had to give, and it did. “When I returned home I sat my exams and failed them,” he says. “That rocked me psychologically. “I was already finding it difficult to play for Llanelli because of the commuting in the evenings for training. I was just trying to do too much. I’d often spend lunchtime in my car, having a 20-minute break before clinics in medical school.

“I was at the point where I wasn’t enjoying anything – the dentistry or the rugby – and I had to make a decision. I came to the conclusion my medical career should come first.

“I made myself unavailable for Llanelli from around February 1999. The club were good about it. They let me keep the car they’d given me.

“I had a great year playing for fun with Cardiff Meds and Welsh Students before joining Neath on qualifying in 2000. I’m glad I took the decision I took to step back from rugby in 1999.

“But part of me thinks: ‘Could I have done things the other way around? Could I have perhaps taken a few years out to concentrate on the rugby and see how it would have gone?’

“But it wasn’t to be. It’s not a big issue. Like I say, I loved my time playing and I also enjoy my career as a dentist hugely.”

His career at the top may have been short, but it was eventful.

In 1997, after just 11 games for Llanelli, he came up against New Zealand, Christian Cullen and all. The West Wales team had famously beaten the All Blacks 25 years earlier but couldn’t repeat the trick at Stradey as the visitors ran out 81-3 winners. Revenge with bells on, with Cullen a class apart as he ran in four tries. “He was lethal,” recalls Williams. “He had this ability to generate space for himself and team-mates.

“They say the sign of a good player is that when he gets the ball the game all around him seems to slow down.

“That seemed to happen with him more than any other New Zealand player that night.

“They had people like Frank Bunce,

Andrew Mehrtens, Jeff Wilson and Glen Osborne on the pitch, along with the likes of Josh Kronfeld and Zinzan Brooke. But that night Cullen was something else.

“There was one point when we were attacking near their try line. New Zealand turned us over, took it the other way, and Cullen chipped over the defence, caught the ball and just ran clear. I don’t think anyone touched him. He had phenomenal speed.”

“I think I played against two of the best rugby teams ever in South Africa in 1998 and New Zealand in 1997.”

His time with Neath lasted barely a handful of games before injury intervened. “It was a shame because there were some good players there and they were starting to pick up,” he says.

“I was part of a back three with Delme Williams and Shane Williams. It was exciting to be playing alongside two such fantastic players.

“Shane had this off-the-mark ability, while Delme was exceptionally fast and strong.

“But just a few games into my spell there, I smashed a kneecap playing against Caerphilly. Initially I was told it would be six weeks out.

“Then they discovered I’d broken it into five pieces.

“It was damaged so badly they

South Africa wing Stefan Terblanche scores one of his side’s 15 tries in their 96-13 demolition of Wales in 1998. were talking about taking out the knee cap completely.

“I was getting involved in conversations about trying to save it. I had just turned 25, but the reality was that six weeks prediction on the night turned into two-and-a-half years of trying to get your life back on track.”

Williams did play again, having an enjoyable spell with Bonymaen, but his top-flight days were over.

These days, his work focus is on his dentistry.

Williams is the principal dentist in the Promenade Dental Practice he owns in Mumbles. He lives with his wife and their two children. He also coaches Uplands Under-11s. Life is good.

It didn’t last long for him at the top in rugby. Does he have any regrets? “Nah, you’d do it all again,” he says. “Those days pretending to be Jonathan Davies, Robert Jones, Bleddyn Bowen in junior school – if you’d have told me then I’d go on to win a cap for Wales, play more than 60 games for Llanelli and figure in a Welsh cup final, for Llanelli against Ebbw Vale, I’d have taken that.

“Definitely, I’d do it all again. I count myself lucky to have had all those experiences.”

Fortunate is a man with such perspective.