{"id":62264,"date":"2026-10-07T17:34:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T17:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/shanelle-williams-wales-hooker-realises-childhood-dream-and-prepares-for-japan\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T17:34:00","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T17:34:00","slug":"shanelle-williams-wales-hooker-realises-childhood-dream-and-prepares-for-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/shanelle-williams-wales-hooker-realises-childhood-dream-and-prepares-for-japan\/","title":{"rendered":"Shanelle Williams: Wales hooker realises childhood dream and prepares for Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Shanelle Williams has already fulfilled one childhood ambition after making her Wales debut and now she is preparing for another milestone in Japan.<\/b><\/p>\n

The 19-year-old former Gwernyfed RFC junior came off the bench in Wales’ 50-19 win over South Africa<\/a> in the WXV Global Series in September.<\/p>\n

As a child, Williams had written on her Christmas list that she wanted to play for Wales.<\/p>\n

“I didn’t actually know that there was a women’s team,” the hooker said.<\/p>\n

“I used to tell my dad that I was going to play for Wales with the boys.<\/p>\n

“Then I obviously realised that I actually can play for Wales. Since then, everything I’ve done, rugby’s always been a priority.”<\/p>\n

Williams had forgotten about the Christmas list until her older sister reminded her after she won her first Wales Under-18 cap.<\/p>\n

“It’s quite a nice reminder that I have been working for this for so long, so it has all been worth it,” she said.<\/p>\n

Williams started playing rugby at Gwernyfed aged eight, spending four years there before joining the Red Kites and later moving into the Wales pathway.<\/p>\n

She went on to play for Cardiff Quins and Cardiff Rugby before attending Hartpury College.<\/p>\n

Her father played a key role, regularly making the journey from home to Cardiff for training.<\/p>\n

“Obviously I’m from Gwernyfed, so it was about an hour and a half down to Cardiff,” she said.<\/p>\n

“He used to take me for training on Friday nights straight after school.<\/p>\n

“I wouldn’t have been able to do it if my dad hadn’t given me that opportunity, so I’m very lucky.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Shanelle Williams has already fulfilled one childhood ambition after making her Wales debut and now she is preparing for another milestone in Japan. The 19-year-old former Gwernyfed RFC junior came off the bench in Wales’ 50-19 win over South Africa in the WXV Global Series in September. As a child, Williams had written on her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62265,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[3873,4607,17015,3940,5637,17016,17014,312,5151],"class_list":["post-62264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wales","tag-childhood","tag-dream","tag-hooker","tag-japan","tag-prepares","tag-realises","tag-shanelle","tag-wales","tag-williams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62264"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62266,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62264\/revisions\/62266"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}