Chester Williams

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Chester Mornay Williams (born 8 August 1970 in Paarl, Western Province, South Africa) played winger for the South African national rugby union team the Springboks from 1993 to 2000. Williams also played rugby for the Western Province in the Currie Cup. He is best known as the star winger of the Springbok squad that won the 1995 Rugby World Cup and was nicknamed "The Black Pearl".

Williams is only 1.74 meters tall with a playing weight of 84 kilograms, a small man by rugby standards. He was the first non-white player to be included in the Springboks squad since Errol Tobias in the early 1980's. The selection of non-white players wasn't a common thing in South Africa before 1992 because of the country's policy of apartheid.

He made his debut for the Springboks at the age of 23 against Argentina on the 13th of November 1993 in Buenos Aires, a game that the Springboks went on to win 52-23 and in which he also scored a try. Williams was on the Springboks team that won the 1995 Rugby World Cup, notably scoring a try against England in pool play. His Boks career, hampered by knee injuries in 1996 and 1997, ended with a 23-13 win against Wales on the 26th of November 2000 in Cardiff. In total he played 27 games for the Springboks, scoring 14 tries.

In 2001 Williams was selected as the coach of the South African sevens team that won bronze at the 2002 Commonwealth Games and ended runners up in the World Sevens Series. He remained sevens coach until 2003.

Also in 2002 Williams released his controversial autobiography, simply titled "Chester", in which he claimed that he was shunned by some of his team mates in the 1995 Springbok squad and even called racist names.

Williams was mentioned as one of the possible successors to Springbok coach Rudolph Straeuli after he resigned in 2003, but when the job was given to Jake White in 2004 he became coach of the Cats Super 12 team instead. He remained coach until July 2005 when he was fired after achieving only limited success. However, in 2006, he was brought back into the South African coaching ranks as the head coach of the national "A" side (a developmental side for the Boks).[1]

He was named as the new coach of the Pumas, the team representing Mpumalanga in the Currie Cup, on 7 September 2006. He signed a two-year deal with the team, effective 1 October.^[1]