Sonny sorry for leaving mates in the lurch but

Sonny sorry for leaving mates in the lurch but all's still sweet in France
Brad Walter | September 25, 2008
http://www.leaguehq.com.au/news/news...217331190.html

SONNY BILL WILLIAMS has just one regret about leaving the Bulldogs - the way he went about it.

With his girlfriend Jenna Shaw due to join him in Toulon later this week, Williams told the Herald he was enjoying life in the south of France and couldn't be happier with his change of club and code.

"The only thing I regret is the way I left," Williams admitted for the first time. "But I didn't have any choice. Originally, I planned to sit down with all the boys at the end of the year and tell every single one of them. But after getting legal advice from one of the best lawyers in Australia, Mark O'Brien, it became apparent that I was going to have to leave the way I did with no one knowing and still seven weeks to go."

After just recently watching the interview that was shown on The Footy Show the week after he arrived in Toulon, Williams wanted to provide some explanation for his sudden departure. At the time, the 23-year-old Kiwi was restricted in what he could say as the Bulldogs had begun legal action against him and Toulon.

"When I sit back and think about things it gets to me a lot that me having to go the way I did hurt a lot of the boys the way it did," he said. "If I could change anything it would be how I left because I never wanted to hurt the boys."

Out with a leg injury, Williams admits he is frustrated that he is unlikely to play for another three weeks but he said he has been able to study the game more closely during his time off. "I'm loving it over here," he said. "I don't have any problems with the club and I don't have any problems with the president [Mourad Boudjellal].

"The people who have been saying that are just trying to drive a wedge between me and [coach] Tana [Umaga] and me and the club. It's obviously disappointing being injured but it's given me a chance to really watch the game a bit more closely. When I got here I was pretty much thrown into the deep end. One of the things I'm enjoying is not being in a fishbowl existence like in Sydney and being able to relax ."

Asked about speculation that he was homesick and wanted to return to the Bulldogs, Williams said: "I moved from Auckland to Sydney when I was 16 so I've been through all that before and it doesn't bother me. I just think it's a bit sad that I'm on the other side of the world playing rugby and enjoying myself and there's people over there obsessing about what I'm doing or how I'm feeling. My dad phoned me up about it and I've had a few other people ring me up but they're OK. Unless I'm quoted in the story they don't worry about it. The same people had an agenda against me virtually since I started my career."