By Chris Dunlavy
IAN Painter still remembers the day in 2002 when he first saw Ashley Williams pull on a Hednesford Town shirt.
“He was a 17-year-old kid fresh out of the West Brom reserves,” says Painter, now an academy coach at Kidderminster.
“He'd just been released and was working on the waltzers at Drayton Manor to make a bit of money.
“But just a few minutes into the very first training session, my assistant Archie King turned to me and said ‘God, he can play a bit'.
“You could tell he'd been at a pro club. We had some really good centre-halves at the time, people like Chris Brindley who were brilliant at winning the ball.
Calmness
“But with Ash, he'd drop five yards, take it down on his chest or his thigh and spread it out to the full-back or into midfield. He had that calmness and never gave the ball away. I thought ‘This lad could go places'.”
Yet even Painter, a former Stoke City and Coventry striker, never imagined quite how far the stocky young lad from Tamworth would get.
Now 31, Williams has played 178 Premier League games for Swansea, lifted the Capital One Cup and, on Saturday, will lead out Wales at Euro 2016, his country's first tournament for more than half a century.
“I'm delighted for him,” said Andy Blakeley, Williams' tutor at Cannock Chase Technical College, where the centre-half spent two years studying for a B-Tech in Sport whilst playing for the Pitmen.
“He's played in every division of the Football League. He's the first black captain of Wales. And it all started in the Southern League with 60 games for Hednesford.
“So much has been made of Jamie Vardy and I think that because Ash is a centre-half and he's out of the way down in Wales, what he's achieved is sometimes overlooked. But it's phenomenal, it really is.”
Blakeley, who now manages Kiddy's academy, was Williams' college tutor and saw first hand the burning desire to clamber out of Non-League.
“Ash was a fantastic lad who always tried to get his work in on time,” he said. “But education was definitely a secondary concern.
“I remember one Friday, he came in and slumped down in his chair. I said ‘Ash, come on mate, we've got to get this work done today'.
“He just stood up and said ‘Andy, all I want to do is be a professional. I know I'm good enough. I just need a break'. Then he just sat back down and got on with it.
“We could all see his talent. I ran a college team at the time and most of the lads from Hednesford played. Ashley didn't at first, but everyone who came down were going ‘Andy, you should see him, he's such a good player'. Eventually he played a game for us. I remember it like it was yesterday because I went home to my dad and said ‘This kid is better than anyone I've ever seen at this level'.
“I'd actually done my YTS at Walsall, so I called them told them to take a look. For some reason, they never followed it up.
“Then, about January 2003, we gave him the week off to go on trial at Oldham. He came back and said ‘Andy, I loved it, this is what I want'. Unfortunately, Hednesford wanted £20,000 and Oldham were only willing to pay five grand.
“He actually turned round to me and said ‘Andy, do you know any banks in Cannock that will lend me £15,000 so I can pay the difference?' I had to talk him out of it because his contract only had about four months to run!”
In the end, it wasn't Oldham but Division Two Stockport County who pounced, courtesy of Painter's links with then-Hatters gaffer Sammy McIlroy.
Williams eventually played 173 times for County before earning his move to Swansea in 2008, where he won two promotions in four years to reach the top flight.
“Even someone as good as Ashley needs a stroke of luck,” said Painter. “And his was Sammy McIlroy being in charge at Stockport.
“Sammy was my skipper at Stoke when I got into the team at 17 and we'd always kept in touch with each other.
“I got Sammy down to look at Ash about three or four times and I said ‘Look, if you want him, we won't stand in your way'. We did the deal and off we went.”
Painter also revealed that Williams had a secret weapon – his mother Lyn, who at one stage called The NLP to demand a few stories showcasing her son's talents.
“Ashley was dead shy,” he recalls. “But his mother – a typical Jamaican woman – was absolutely formidable.
“The day we played Tamworth – which was where he came from – I left him out. She came to see me and gave me an absolute rollicking. I saw him the next day and said ‘Ash, your mum just gave me a right mouthful'. He was so embarrassed!
Momento
“About six months later, after I'd left Hednesford, I got a call in the sports shop that I ran. This voice said ‘It's Mrs Williams, I'd like to apologise for what I said'. I told her not to worry – I could see she just loved her son. Mind you, I wouldn't want to be Chris Coleman!”
Coleman, of course, is certain to pick his trusty stalwart. And when Williams walks out to face Slovakia at the Stade de Bordeaux on Saturday, Blakeley will dig out a memento of those days at Hednesford.
“Just before Ashley moved to Stockport, we played a 5-a-side tournament up in Stoke,” he recalls. “Ash came along and was a cut above the rest. Nobody could get near him. We won by a mile – it was the easiest time I've ever had as a manager.
“I've still got a picture from that day in my office and I look at it every now and then to remind me how far he's gone. He's done brilliantly.”
