Ali’s Book of Tall Tales by Ali Williams

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If a talented young sportsman absolutely must produce a book about his career to date, best that it be exactly like this effort from All Black lock (none of your David Beckham hagiography, thanks, especially when he doesn’t even mention the nanny. Pet peeve, sorry. Moving on).

It consists of a series of stories about life as a highly recognizable football player in a rugby-mad nation, in no particular order – Williams veers from the sublime (his swift and straightforward rise to national representation) to the dramatic (the truth about why he was sent home in the midst of a Blues campaign in South Africa) via the painful (a broken jaw and six weeks of nothing but liquid food, compounded by the indignity of being visited in hospital by drunk, partying team-mates. On a related note, his account of trying to turn two Burger Wisconsin burgers into a meatshake is hilarious).

One of the most widely reported tales at the time of publication was the spiking of a beer-filled rugby trophy with Viagra and the feeding of the contents to several in the vicinity, including All Black coach Graham Henry. Henry was characteristically taciturn when quizzed on the subject, but a couple of Williams’ team-mates were more forthcoming, and it makes for some cringe-worthy reading.

Williams is responsible for this book’s many side-splitting anecdotes, but James Griffin (best known for co-creating and writing Outrageous Fortune) deserves all the credit for its construction. The piss-taking tone is spot-on and quite perfectly Kiwi (Griffin knows better than to lace the pages with self-deprecation – this would be un-Ali).

Right at the end, Williams clears up a small matter of mispronunciation: his name is pronounced as in, “Wouldn’t want to run into him in a dark alley,” rather than as in Muhammad Ali. Williams has had a bad run with injuries and is currently down for the count with a torn Achilles tendon, but hopefully he’ll be back on the pitch soon. There are more anecdotes to be generated – this book needs a sequel.

3/5 Stars: An engaging piss-take from start to finish, and you don’t need to be a rugby fan to get the humour.