All Blacks prop Tamaiti Williams has described how an antibiotic-resistant superbug that took hold in his spine left doctors warning he could end up in a wheelchair, in his most detailed account yet of an illness that has kept him off the field since March.
Speaking to 1News in an interview published on Wednesday 16 September, the 26-year-old Crusaders front rower said he was only now beginning to feel like himself again, seven months after he first became sick.
“People ask how I’m feeling and I tell them I’m still going through it,” Williams said. “We’ve been in survival mode, doing whatever we could to get through, but now I’m finally starting to stack some days together.”
In recent weeks he has been cleared to start rehabilitation with the Crusaders medical team. It is the first real step back towards rugby for a player who spent about four months in and out of hospital, lost around 20 kilograms of muscle and needed four large screws put into his spine to stabilise it.
The trouble began with what Williams thought was nothing more than a sore back. According to RugbyPass, the pain flared during a week off after the Crusaders’ round three Super Rugby Pacific match against the Chiefs. On 30 March the Crusaders announced he was in hospital with discitis, an infection of a spinal disc, and ruled him out for the rest of the 2026 season.
At that point the outlook sounded reasonably hopeful. Speaking from hospital in March, Williams told the club, “I’m feeling gutted, but I’m also grateful that the news isn’t as bad as what it could be.” He added that he had been told to expect a full recovery.
What followed was far harder. The bug behind the infection turned out to be MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a strain of staph bacteria that does not respond to most common antibiotics. It had settled in his back and begun eating away at the disc.
“I knew it was bad when the meds weren’t working. I thought people thought I was crazy cause of the pain I was in,” Williams told 1News. “They said I could be in a wheelchair. But luckily it was my upper back… if it was in my lumbar spine, it would’ve been a different story.”
Crusaders doctor Hamish Reid said the seriousness of the situation became clear very quickly. “At worst, MRSA can kill you. And that’s the reality of what it was like in the first couple of weeks,” Reid said. “He was really, really unwell and the bug had spread around his blood.”
The lowest point came after Williams was finally sent home, only for the infection to return. He then went through spinal fusion surgery. On the podcast The Good, The Bad, and The Rugby earlier in September, he said the screws were placed between the T12 and L1 vertebrae, where the upper and lower back meet, and that he expected to remain on oral antibiotics until mid-October.
Reid said the uncertainty had been the toughest part for everyone involved, and that a returning infection had to be treated for much longer to reduce the chance of it coming back again.
Williams was also frank about the mental toll. After months on strong pain medication, he stopped taking it abruptly once he left hospital and was hit by withdrawal symptoms he had not expected.
“That one caught me blindsided,” he said. “I’d been on a lot of pain meds for a long time. When I got out of hospital, I went cold turkey. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing, but I’d had enough.”
He told 1News he now plans to see a therapist and wants other people to know that asking for help is not a weakness. “I want to show it’s not weak to speak out. It might not be hard today, but tomorrow could be different, so we’ll put a plan in place and see the right people.”
The Crusaders are in no hurry to get him back on the field. “Rugby’s one thing in life, but being healthy and functional comes before that,” Reid said. “The priority has been getting him back to being a happy, healthy person who can support his family before we look to rugby.”
Williams said he had accepted the long road ahead. “I’ve accepted that. I know there’s a lot of hard work that needs to go in. I’ll stay open-minded and just roll with the punches.”
His rehabilitation is being run in six-week blocks with scans between each phase, and the aim, he told the podcast, is to be cleared to run by the first day of pre-season. He hopes to take part in a Crusaders pre-season for the first time in five years, which would put him in the frame for the 2027 Super Rugby Pacific campaign.
Born in WhangΔrei and schooled at Saint Kentigern College in Auckland, the 196 centimetre prop made his test debut against South Africa in July 2023 and was part of the squad that reached the Rugby World Cup final in France later that year. At 26, he had been widely seen as a long-term fixture in the All Blacks front row heading towards the 2027 World Cup in Australia.
Whether he makes it that far is a question for another day. For now, the man who was warned he could end up in a wheelchair is walking up and down the gym at the Crusaders’ base in Christchurch, and counting that as a win.
MRSA infections of the spine are rare in otherwise fit young people, but Williams’ story is a reminder that a persistent back pain that does not respond to treatment is worth taking seriously. Anyone with severe back pain alongside a fever or feeling generally unwell should see a doctor promptly.
Do you think Tamaiti Williams will be back in an All Blacks jersey before the 2027 World Cup? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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