SCARLETS V TOULON, 1PM
WAYNE PIVAC could have Davy Crockett’s number on speed dial and he would still prefer to call on Liam Williams to man the defensive barricades for the Scarlets in their European Champions Cup engagement with Toulon in Llanelli today.
Indeed, the way Pivac talks there is no one he would rather see at the back.
Rewind to the events Mayol last weekend.
While the big beasts of Toulon were rampaging through the Scarlets’ defence, Williams largely stood firm, at one point throwing himself beneath the part-man, part-freight train that is Mathieu Bastareaud as he attempted another surge forward. Others were not so successful. Indeed, a couple of one-on-one misses created the space that led to two of the French tries.
But Pivac singled out his fullback for not flinching in the face of at Stade the hard-running challenge posed by Toulon’s backs on the Cote d’Azur.
“Often it does take two men to tackle a big ball-carrier,” said the New Zealander.
“But then you get a guy like Liam Williams who seems to put most players to the ground.
“I think it’s about the attitude that you take into the tackle as well as the technique and we’ll be working on those areas heading into this game. “We know what’s ahead. “Tidying up the defence, making sure we make one-on-one tackles, getting our heights right and making sure we make good contact — those are the areas we’ll be ad- dressing.”
It was hardly a surprise to see former scaffolder Williams perform so courageously, for he is a player who seemingly doesn’t carry a fear gene.
Causing most of the mayhem in southern France were Ma’a Nonu and his 6ft, 19st 8lb midfield sidekick Mathieu Bastareaud, who between them were responsible for four clean breaks and nine defenders beaten.
Bastareaud set up his side’s first try by rampaging through an attempted tackle from Rhys Patchell, then he did the same to Ken Owens to provide the platform for the next touchdown.
Scott Williams, who will line up against Nonu and Bastareaud for the second successive weekend, said: “We knew where Toulon were going to come at us last week.
“Unfortunately we just slipped off a couple of tackles across the board.
“We didn’t start as we wanted to and we let them have an easy try. It was tough to come back then.
“We have to keep practising defensively.
“I’m pretty sure Patchell is trying his best. He’s going as hard and as low as he can on him (Bastareaud). “They’re just big, powerful men.” Williams was asked if he had faced two more formidable centres over his career. “They are definitely up there,” he said.
“Nonu is a World Cup winner and Bastareaud played really well. He’s very strong and a hard guy to put down.
“They were good together and it’s tough to play against them.
“That said, we didn’t help ourselves. We gave them a bit of an easy ride.
“We have to make sure our firstup tackling is good.”
The Scarlets can ill-afford to lose if they are to maintain a serious hope of qualifying for the knock- out stage, having been beaten twice in this pool already.
Exeter Chiefs did make it through to the quarter-finals last term despite losing three times, but the group they were in was almost freakish, with all four sides returning the same number of wins and defeats.
Generally, a team that succumbs three times at the pool stage in Europe is going only one way, and it isn’t into the last eight.
Nonetheless, Williams will head into the return against Toulon with a measure of hope.
“They are coming to us this weekend and we have to make it hard for them,” he said.
“They are coming down to Parc y Scarlets.
“At one point in the game last weekend I thought we had them on the ropes. If we’d been awarded the tries that the referee ruled out it would have been a different game.
“We have to believe we can win. I really think we can.”