• Wales 25-29 South Africa

Williams suffers injury setback

Shane Williams is hurled to the ground © Getty Images

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Wales winger Shane Williams is facing up to another disappointing November after suffering a shoulder injury in Saturday's loss to South Africa at the Millennium Stadium.

The Ospreys flyer failed to re-emerge for the second-half in Cardiff after landing heavily in a tackle from Springbok centre Frans Steyn, having earlier laid on a try for centre James Hook.

Wales boss Warren Gatland is already facing a lengthy injury list after seeing prop Gethin Jenkins and flanker Dan Lydiate withdraw from the starting line-up against the Springboks at short-notice and Williams admitted in his column for Wales on Sunday that his immediate future is uncertain.

"Truth is, I just don't know yet what I've done to the shoulder," he said. "I've had an operation on both of them in the past to clean them out, but because I have never dislocated my shoulder before I'm not sure how bad it is.

"I went down, heard it pop and then when I rolled over on it, I heard another pop, so I'm assuming it has popped out and popped back in. But I'm not a doctor. I have a scan planned for this morning, so fingers crossed. I don't have a clue how long I may be out.

"It's as sore as hell at the moment, almost unbearably so. It's like toothache and I've had to take quite a few painkillers. I am hoping there are no major complications and that it is just bruising so I will be able to get back as quickly as possible."

Williams praised debutant George North after his brace of tries gave Wales hope of a rare southern hemisphere scalp but also raised doubts over the performance of referee Steve Walsh.

"I thought when George got his second try the pendulum was swinging back to us and, while I don't like blaming referees, I thought there were a few questionable decisions that cost us," he said.

"But the bottom line is that South Africa are a side comfortable with the ball in their hands and when they got close to our line you could always sense that something was going to happen. That wasn't perhaps the case for us. The two tries they scored they were camped on our line and you sensed that the try had to come. With us we were getting close to the line but you wondered whether we knew how to finish it off."

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