Fatuous as comparisons between Keelan Giles and Shane Williams may be, one assertion that can safely be made about the teenage Ospreys prodigy is that Welsh rugby has seen nothing like him since his exalted predecessor.
Giles’ mesmeric footwork and gliding pace is regularly making defenders look as fatuous as any who were bamboozled by Williams. We already know it is only a matter of time before his Test career, irksomely delayed from Wales’ autumn series, takes off.
Ospreys’ Gorseinon teenager makes his return from a shoulder injury on the wing in the European Challenge Cup tie against Lyons in Swansea today.
Giles is not presuming a place in Howley’s Six Nations squad on Tuesday, and even if he is picked it does not necessarily mean this is his time. Giles, who will be 19 in a fortnight, can afford to wait. His impact this season, with 11 tries in his first eight appearances as a first-choice Osprey, many of them stunning reflections of his precocious talent, has already exceeded all expectations.
“Coming into this season, my aims were to play again for Wales Under-20s, have a run of games in the Anglo-Welsh Cup and hopefully, when the international boys were away, maybe I’d have a chance to make my debut,” he said. “When I train with Ospreys I see all those fine players around me and it’s pretty surreal. I’m loving it and trying to soak it all in. It’s brilliant.
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“If someone had told me at the start where I was going to be by now, I would have pinched myself. I feel I’ve handled it well enough but it has come awfully quickly. There’s never been any time for me to be worrying or nervous.”
Giles had not represented Ospreys when he received a summons to train with Wales in New Zealand last June. He had played only five times — scoring eight tries, mind you — when he joined Howley’s autumn squad.
Howley had a chance to be daring by selecting him against Japan. Instead Giles was on the bench and, when the game went badly wrong, he stayed there. The idea had been for Wales to pull far enough clear for Giles to have a good half-hour. Instead, it was all they could do to win by three points and he stayed a spectator.
It was a contentious omission, whatever Giles may now feel. “It’s given me a bigger hunger to work harder, driven me to want it even more after being so close to winning a cap. They didn’t want to risk it that I might go on and do something bad. After the game I was frustrated, but in hindsight it was the best decision and I understand why it was made.”
So Giles remains uncapped as well as the hottest property in Welsh rugby, a young man so carefully protected by his elders that this is his first interview. He is affable, agreeably unassuming but not in the least tongue-tied. It is his rugby that gives him his real eloquence. Some of Giles’ tries reflect not so much a free spirit as a player of such innate intelligence he does not have to try that hard to decide what to do and when. It just comes naturally.
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He scored three tries in Lyons, one of such exquisite individuality it was hard to imagine he could surpass it. He duly did, with as fine a try in Grenoble as he will ever score. For sure, Rory Thornton never thought he was giving a scoring pass when he found Giles near the Ospreys 22.
“Rory gave me the ball and I tried to beat the first guy, came on to the second guy and worked it from there. Because the adrenaline was running so fast it was a bit of a shock that it had worked out. I do take pride in scoring tries but there’s only ever a split-second of reflection afterwards. I just play from instinct using the traits which are my strength: my footwork and speed. I always had that when I was younger.”
Giles is 5ft 9in and 12st, compared with the mature Williams’ 5ft 7in and 12st 8lb, and there is no avoiding the defensive demands this makes of him in an age of rugby behemoths. Williams managed well enough; Giles regards this as his prime “work-on”.
“We know his potential to become something very special,” said Ospreys’ backs coach Gruff Rees. “But you have to earn respect by doing it for a significant length of time, which Shane Williams, who had his own setbacks along the way, did in so many different ways.”