Will Power

Rejected by West Bromwich Albion at 15, Ashley Williams faced making a life for himself outside of the game he loved. Family – and the fear of being labelled a failure – drove him back to the top…

At the weekends we spent a lot of time watching Match of the Day together but sometimes he used to go to bed early and say to me, 'I've got West Brom in the morning, I'm having an early night.’

“On school days, he'd ask me to wake him up before I went to work at 7am so he could go for a run. He'd come back, have his cup of tea and be off to school. He did a lot of training and I had to stop him sometimes because he was doing too much.”

Errol Williams clearly remembers the determination that set his son apart. His coach for both Belgrave Bullets and the Staffordshire County representative side, he had witnessed it first hand from an early age both at home and on the pitch. Then, just a few months before his 16th birthday, disaster struck. Ashley’s services at The Hawthorns would no longer be required.

“He wasn’t tall enough, they said he was too small,” explains mum, Lyn. “He didn’t play football for a year, he was heartbroken.”

Fast-forward to 2016 and the scenario seems somewhat difficult to fathom. Ashley Williams, 32 this month, has since joined an exclusive group of players to appear in each of England’s professional divisions, has lifted the League Cup trophy as a captain at Wembley and skippered Wales – a country he qualifies to represent through his grandfather – to the semi-finals of Euro 2016 in what was their first appearance at a major championship for 58 years. He has also just completed a multi-million pound move to Everton, becoming the third major signing for new boss Ronald Koeman.