Shane one of the greats – Marshall

Mar 22 2008 by Simon Thomas, Western Mail

JUSTIN MARSHALL says Shane Williams is up there alongside Jonah Lomu as the greatest finisher he has ever seen in the game of rugby.

Ospreys scrum-half Marshall played alongside Lomu, below, for the All Blacks when the giant winger was in his pomp in the mid-to-late 1990s.

Now he finds himself a team-mate of another player in the form of his life in the rather more diminutive shape of Shane Williams, the player of the 2008 Six Nations.

You could hardly get two more contrasting wingers in terms of size, but Marshall brackets them together when it comes to their phenomenal try-scoring ability.

“Shane is the best finishing wing I’ve ever seen, apart from maybe Jonah Lomu,” said the Kiwi great. “Just so many times when he’s confronted with a one-on-one situation he comes off best, which is something Jonah was really strong at.

“When he was in his prime with the All Blacks, we just tried to get him one-on-ones. We didn’t try to get him mismatches, just one-on-ones, and it’s the same with Shane. If you give him a one-on-one, you usually get the defender tackling thin air.

“In all the time I’ve been involved in the game, Shane is the best player I’ve ever seen in agility and foot-speed wise and in terms of his ability to change angles and step without losing any momentum or speed. He’s somebody totally at the other end of the scale to Jonah, but it just shows it’s a game for all sizes.”

The 81-cap Marshall believes Grand Slam hero Williams has benefited from Wales playing to his strengths during the Six Nations.

“What he’s achieved in the championship has been immense,” he said. “From the get-go when he started this season with the Ospreys, some of the tries and some of the things he’s done for us have been absolutely brilliant.

“The good thing Wales have done, which they failed to do in the World Cup, is they’ve actually got him the ball a lot more regularly. He didn’t have to go looking for it. You know when Shane is frustrated because I feel him operating in and around me. He’s looking for the ball off nine, off 10.

“But you didn’t see him do that so much in the championship. He retained his width, which I think he needs to do, and he was confident that the ball was eventually going to get to him the way Wales were playing and the game-plan they had.”

While the Grand Slam triumph shocked most observers, Marshall insists he hasn’t been surprised by the rapid strides taken under his countryman Warren Gatland.

“When I was asked what I thought about the Wales job after the World Cup the first thing I said was I felt it was the best opportunity for someone to step into world rugby because you’ve got a magnificent amount of talent in that squad,” he said.

“You just needed to give them some direction. They were really lacking that and it was just a matter of somebody like Warren, who is a fantastic coach, coming in and moulding it all together really.”

Marshall believes Wales fully deserved their Six Nations clean sweep because of the way they approached the tournament.

“With the rest of the sides, all the pressure on the coaches and the players looked like it stifled them from expressing themselves and they ended up playing really conservative rugby,” he said.

“There were a number of teams that seemed as though they had a lot of weight and expectation on their shoulders and I felt much of the rugby reflected that in a bad sense, Wales apart.

“They were the one squad that basically stayed together. They had a new coach come in, but they looked like they had some direction and some purpose about the way they were playing.”

The next challenge for Wales is to take on the southern hemisphere superpowers, with a summer tour of South Africa to be followed by autumn internationals against the All Blacks, Australia and the Springboks.

“I think it’s good that they’ve got these immediate tests,” said Marshall. “People might say, ‘Do we really need to go out there and knock our confidence again?’

“But it’s not about confidence, it’s about competing and then winning. Wales haven’t been competitive enough against the southern hemisphere sides in the past, particularly New Zealand. I think it’s a good thing that they test where they are at now.

“I don’t know what Warren’ s selection policy will be for the South African tour, but I would love to see them go out there at their very best because they are capable of winning both of those Tests.

“They are in a good position to kick on from where they are now against the Boks, who are under a new coach and under a little bit of pressure with new players coming in at a slightly vulnerable time.”

On a personal note, the 34-year-old Marshall is restricted to a spot on the bench for today’s EDF semi-final against Saracens at the Millennium Stadium, with Wales star Mike Phillips getting the nod at scrum-half.

The veteran Kiwi will be straining at the leash to get out on the pitch at some stage, having had precious little rugby over the past couple of months.

“I feel so mentally refreshed and I’m really looking forward to the challenges we’ve got ahead,” he said. “There’s a hell of a lot to play for and that’s really exciting for me, having only played two games since the last round of the Heineken Cup in January and one of those at full-back.”

Looking at today’s Anglo-Welsh clash, he added, “The EDF is a very important competition for us. It gives us more opportunities to play against different opposition and ones we are likely to meet in Europe.

“We lost in the final last year and we want to go one better this time.”

Justin Marshall wears the new v1.08 Puma rugby boot. For more details, go to www.puma.com