Catwalk star meets kid who learned football from Ronaldo videos - Aucklands unlikely heroes SPECIAL REPORT: The hugely differing realities of two men have been transformed for a common cause as Oceania champions Auckland take the Club World Cup by storm Dec 13, 2014 10:00:00By Kris Voakes in Rabat One has spent much of the past decade posing for glossy magazines in the worlds fashion capitals. The other grew up on a neglected island in the Pacific Ocean and was introduced to football just eight years ago when a school friend showed him a YouTube clip of Cristiano Ronaldo. To all intents and purposes, Tamati Williams and David Browne come from different worlds. Yet they were united in jubilation on Wednesday as Auckland City celebrated a shock Club World Cup win against Moroccan champions Moghreb Tetouan. Williams has known the high life before, just not in football. The 30-year-old goalkeeper saved a penalty in the shoot-out win which set up Saturdays quarter-final against Setif. Yet, 10 years ago, football was on the backburner when Williams was coaxed into the modelling world, quickly becoming a notable face for brands such as Calvin Klein and Espirit and even retiring from the game in 2007 to become a full-time catwalk star. It was just after New Zealand lost out in the qualifiers for the World Cup. We didnt perform too well and we lost to Vanuatu 4-2 in Adelaide at a time when Australia were still part of our confederation, and my understanding was that there were no competitive fixtures for the next two years, he tellsGoal. So I thought brilliant, its the perfect opportunity to try modelling. I had had a lot of people within a short space of time saying I should give it a go or that theyd seen someone who looked really similar to me doing some stuff. They told me I should look into it, so I called a couple of agencies in Auckland. One of them said to just go in as they werent that busy at the time, so I just walked in and it went fantastically well. Then a year later a guy saw me on the agencys website and brought me over to Australia. Six months later I was in Paris and Milan for some shows, then a couple of months after that I was in New York. I thought the whole thing would last a couple of months, but I ended up doing it for four years! The passion for football continued to shine through for Williams, though, and he was soon pining for the game once more. I remember seeing the national team play a couple of times, for instance I was in Paris when they played Austria and against Brazil in Zurich, and I realised I missed it too much so I came back to it, he adds. Tamati Williams |Missed a meeting with a modelling agency to keep Club World Cup dream alive And he still does occasional modelling alongside his postgraduate science studies, despite the merciless teasing he receives from his Auckland team-mates. I get ribbed all the time by these boys! The problem is, if I do something in New Zealand its not high fashion – to be polite – so the stuff they see me do is probably at the lower end of the stuff that I would like my team-mates to be seeing! The win over Moghreb on the back of a clean sheet in normal time represents a career high for Williams, although it did play havoc with some modelling plans. I was actually supposed to be meeting with an agency in Amsterdam on Friday had we lost on Wednesday just to see if there was any kind of cash flow to keep me ticking over. So its still there a little bit, but its definitely not one of my priorities. Watching on from the touchline as Auckland clinched their penalty glory on Wednesday was unused substitute David Browne, a hugely talented 18-year-old from the rugby league-playing nation of Papua New Guinea. It is a country where any kind of usable sporting facility is pretty difficult to come by. Yet many of Auckland Citys large Spanish contingent have suggested that Browne has greater potential than most of the players they have seen developing in their more football-centric homeland. And while this is Brownes third trip to the Club World Cup, this years edition provides a unique opportunity to come face-to-face with the man responsible for captivating his football interest just eight years ago. One of my mates had a Cristiano Ronaldo video downloaded off YouTube and when I started playing football I was like Wow, that looks pretty cool! Maybe I should really put my heart and soul into this and do my very best. Then I just kept watching more videos and seeing football in Europe and everything Ronaldo did, Browne explains toGoal. He just happened to be the first person I saw on video. If it had been Lionel Messi, then it would have been Messi, but Ronaldo inspired me to play football and just push on from there.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 22:13:23 +0000
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