Williams, nicknamed ‘Sanjay’, played amateur rugby while working as a scaffolder in the Port Talbot steelworks.<\/p>\n
He began his professional career with Scarlets – who he represented across two spells – and went on to have stints with Saracens, Cardiff, Japanese side Kubota Spears and finally Newcastle Red Bulls.<\/p>\n
In a video posted on social media, the Swansea-born player said: “I’ve been a professional for 15 years, that takes its toll. I think it’s the right time for me to call it a day.<\/p>\n
“I always thought I would go out on my own terms. Having knee trouble for the past few years has taken its toll.”<\/p>\n
Williams also paid tribute to coaches including Warren Gatland, Neil Jenkins and Nigel Davies before he signed off with the message: “I’d like to thank all of the fans out there who supported me on the way. <\/p>\n
“My journey’s ended but a new chapter is about to begin.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Williams, nicknamed ‘Sanjay’, played amateur rugby while working as a scaffolder in the Port Talbot steelworks. He began…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563786,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-563785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}