TWELVE months ago, Rhys Williams had the world at his feet.

Established in Middlesbrough's first team at the age of 21, and with a place at the World Cup finals provisionally assured, the Australian should have been the happiest man in the world. Yet deep down inside, panic had already set in.

A nagging pain in his pelvic area would not go away. Each time he played, the following day would be worse, more damaging, more debilitating.

His manager, Gordon Strachan, was keen to play him to pursue an outside chance of the play-offs. Williams was equally keen to make himself available, such was the strength of his desire to be a good professional and a World Cup finalist.

So day after day, he dragged his ailing body to the training ground. It was a mistake that was to ruin his dreams of competing in South Africa and cost him 11 months of his career.

"It's hard to explain really," said Williams, whose confident approach, both on and off the pitch, betrays the tenderness of his years. "I was a young lad, it was my first full season in the first team, and I wanted to play every week. I didn't want to let the manager down and I didn't want to let the club down either because they were my employers.

"The World Cup was there in my head, and I wanted to do whatever I could to get to it. In hindsight, that was a mistake, but I knew I had to play well to get into the squad.

"I was stuck in the middle of a difficult situation. I was desperate to play to get to South Africa, but every time I did play the injury got worse.

"Maybe because of my inexperience, I didn't really know what to do. I've spoken to Harry Kewell since, and he said he had a similar experience in his own career. Looking back, he says he wishes he'd told his managers when he thought he needed a break. Deep down, I knew what I was doing wasn't the right way, but sometimes it can be hard to come out and say that."

So Williams soldiered on, starting nine of the final 11 matches of the season for Middlesbrough, before returning to Australia for a brief spell of pre-World Cup rehabilitation.

Even at that stage, he continued to believe he would be involved in South Africa. Even when he struggled to make it on to the training ground at Australia's World Cup base, he refused to accept reality. Eventually, though, he was forced to remove his head from the sand.

"I had a good break after the season and thought that would set things right again for the World Cup," he said. "I missed the last game of the season, did a bit of rehab work in Australia and flew out with the rest of the squad fairly confident. But once I got out to South Africa, it didn't take long for things to go horribly wrong.

"The manager had already told me, ‘Provided you're fit, you're definitely in my 23'. I got over there, but I was breaking down all the time in training and mentally I just wasn't right. I was having a go at the older players, and that's just not me.

"The gaffer saw that and said, ‘There's no way I can pick you'. He told me I could stay with the team, but I just said, ‘Nah, enough's enough, I want to get home and take my mind off it'. That's what I did."

His World Cup dream was over, a traumatic enough experience for anyone, let alone a naive 21-year-old unused to dealing with upset. Worse, though, was to come.

"When I went to see my specialist it was weird, because he didn't initially realise the full extent of the problem," said Williams. "He tried to run me in the first few days I got there and I was in agony straightaway.

"It was a shock for him because once we got to the bottom of it, my injury was one of the worst he'd seen. Coming from a specialist, that's obviously not a good thing to hear. We had to start from day one again. At the worst point, I wasn't even allowed to walk for more than half-an-hour a day. I just had to lay down and rest. I couldn't get on a treadmill or a bike for months and months. It's been like a nightmare."

Williams had osteitis pubis, a problem caused by wear and tear of the pubic bone that is common among young athletes. Ironically, Tony Mowbray suffered the same injury in his own playing career, and was forced to miss Middlesbrough's Wembley appearance in the Zenith Data Systems Cup final as a result.

Williams' recovery, which was mostly conducted in Australia, took more than ten months. When he eventually returned to Teesside, it did not take him long to learn that much had changed.

"I came back at the end of October," he said. "In my first week back, the manager lost his job. It was a really strange experience.

"I came back and I didn't know who half the players were. I didn't know (Kevin) Thomson, (Kris) Boyd, the new goalkeeping coach. There were loads of people sitting in the changing room and I didn't know who half of them were. It was a big shock to me, it felt like I was walking into a new club."