Rising To The Challenge

Three months after joining the club from swansea city, wales captain ashley williams reflects on the tough decision to move north and how he’s striving to repeat his national side’s success at club level.

- Brian Doogan

Have you got your breath back after that?” the reporter from Abu Dhabi asked Ashley Williams, his question punctuated by the 90 minutes of relentlessly high-intensity football that had just been witnessed at The Etihad Stadium. By the sight, too, of a player now stood in front of him whose exertions in resisting the likes of the virtuoso David Silva and the irrepressible Kevin De Bruyne in a sometimes tortuous crossfire had reduced his unyielding spirit and formidable body to the reality of fatigue that had infiltrated his bones and come back for his marrow.

“Not at all!” Williams replied between deep intakes of breath, after stepping off the pitch after the 1-1 draw against Manchester City, a team that manager Ronald Koeman described as ‘the best I’ve ever managed against’. “We all worked so hard to get a point and we’re tired now coming off the pitch. But when you work so hard and you get something from your work - it’s a nice feeling.”

Physically and emotionally drained, Williams was one of the last players to exit the dressing room at the Etihad before making his way onto the team bus. As a statement, the Everton performance articulated everything about the dogged resistance and work ethic that Koeman demands from his team. Williams has come to embody not only much of what has been good so far this season on the pitch but also that sense of what is required of an Everton player off the pitch. Committed, passionate, embracive of the community, accessible. Indeed, he may be one of the most accessible players in the Premier League, a go-to guy not only for the world’s media but also for fans.