8:00am Wednesday 10th March 2010
By John Boyman
CHRIS Williams may be one of the older heads in the Basingstoke dressing room – but he is resisting the urge to throw his weight around.
The second row is only 27 but that makes him an experienced campaigner in a youthful ’Stoke squad. However, he sees all of the players as equals and does not believe he has the right to give anybody instruction.
“People like Simon Appleby and myself certainly do not boss the younger guys around,” he said. “Everyone is equal and me telling people what to do would be a bit silly.
“I do not really take any notice of the fact that I am one of the older guys in the squad. Nobody really acts like they are older and there is a good atmosphere around the place.”
After a disappointing start to 2010, Basingstoke seem to be getting back to the kind of form that saw them shoot up the National Three London table before Christmas.
Williams is not entirely sure what went wrong in January but is keen to point out that the squad are already exceeding even their own expectations.
“We were firing on all cylinders but then just went off the boil,” he said. “We just did not seem to get going against Dorking and Hertford but I cannot put my finger on what was going wrong.
“Hopefully we are over that blip now. We are still not playing as well as we were before Christmas but are certainly doing better than we were just after the break.
“We have got to remember that we were only promoted at the end of last season. It’s easy to forget how well we are doing because we started the season so well.
“I certainly did not expect us to do this well because we were relegated the last time we were in the division. I thought that we might be struggling again because there were a lot of good teams last time around.”
He may not have expected to be doing so well this season but Williams certainly has high hopes for the remainder of the campaign and the seasons beyond that.
“We have got some tough games between now and the end of the season but I cannot see any reason why we cannot win them all,” he said. “We want to finish as high as possible in the league and the Hampshire Cup final is something we are really looking forward to because it would be great to get some silverware.
“The future looks good. We have consolidated this year and next year we will be looking to go even higher. There are a lot of young players getting experience so hopefully we will keep them together.”
Next up for ’Stoke is a trip to second-placed Old Albanians on Saturday. They are probably the biggest test left for Basingstoke this season and won 13-0 when the sides met at Down Grange, but Williams wants to see his side concentrate on their own game rather than worry about their hosts.
“We need to play our own expansive game and see how they cope with it,” he said. “Sometimes we worry about the other side too much so we need to do our own thing and let them worry about us.
“Going to Old Albanians will be a very tough game though. They are strong up front so personally it will be very hard. Last time we struggled massively in the scrum so we just need to battle this time.”
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