Excited Williams says NRL return 'lights fire in him'

SYDNEY • Cross-code superstar Sonny Bill Williams yesterday confirmed that he will return to Australia's National Rugby League with the Sydney Roosters after Covid-19 forced his team, Toronto Wolfpack, to withdraw from England's Super League.

Williams, who has won two Rugby World Cups with the All Blacks and two NRL premierships in Australia, said he would arrive in Sydney today and undergo two weeks' mandatory quarantine.

"It's just the challenge that I get so excited about, it lights that fire inside of you," he told Australia's Channel Nine before departing from Britain.

Williams, who will turn 35 next week, played with the Roosters in 2013 and 2014, winning a premiership in his first year, and said he had remained in contact with Roosters chairman Nick Politis.

"Nick hit me up and asked if I had a couple of months in me to come back," he said. "To be honest, I hadn't trained for a bit. I'd been on holiday mode. We actually booked flights, me and my wife booked flights for a little family European holiday."

Williams is still under contract with the Wolfpack, who would normally bar him from playing in the NRL, but the game's hierarchy bent the rules to allow him in due to "exceptional circumstances".

The New Zealander also needed a special exemption to fly into Sydney with his wife and children, as only Australian citizens are being allowed in at the moment. Once quarantine is completed, he could potentially take to the field for the Roosters' round 15 match against Wests Tigers on Aug 22.

He also represented New Zealand in rugby sevens at the 2016 Rio Olympics and triumphed in all seven of his professional heavyweight boxing bouts, winning the New Zealand title in 2012.

The pandemic yesterday claimed the first two events of the next World Rugby Sevens Series season, in Dubai and Cape Town.

World Rugby said it was continuing to "focus" on staging the rest of the 2021 sevens season, including the Singapore leg in April. The 2019-20 series was ended prematurely last month, with the men's and women's titles both awarded to pacesetters New Zealand.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE​

7 Heavyweight boxing bouts won by Sonny Bill Williams.