It was an unexpected and almost absurdly touching end to six weeks of crunching top-level sport: the hulking, tattooed figure of New Zealand rugby star Sonny Bill Williams almost tenderly placing his brand-new World Cup winners’ medal around the neck of a dumbstruck teenage fan who had rashly run on the pitch to congratulate him.
The spontaneous and widely praised gesture, which will see schoolboy Charlie Line return with a sizeable chunk of gold to show off to fellow pupils, came after the overexcited Line seemingly leaped over a barrier from his pitchside seat to try to reach the All Blacks players who had triumphed over Australia.
Video footage that has been now shared around the world shows a Twickenham steward chase Line, variously described as 14 or 15 but notably slight for either age, and knock him to the turf with a tackle as much clumsy as overzealous.
In stepped Williams, the 30-year-old star, a thoughtful if sometimes controversial figure who has switched four times between the rugby codes and enjoyed a brief if successful parallel career as a heavyweight boxer. He picked Line up from the ground and then, arms around the beaming teenager’s shoulder, walked him back to his seat.
It was in front of Line’s disbelieving friends and family that Williams suddenly lifted his medal from his neck and put it around the boy’s, giving him a final embrace. Line, who is believed to be English and a pupil at the Somerset public school Millfield, looked stunned but could be seen thanking his rescuer.
Williams said later he had been upset to see the slight teenager “smoked” by the security guard. “It was pretty sad,” he said. “He’s just a young fella obviously caught up in the moment.”
Asked about the medal gesture, he said: “Why not try and make a young fella’s night? Hopefully, he’ll remember it for a while. I know he will appreciate it, and when he gets older he will be telling kids. That is more special than it just hanging on a wall.”
For a kid 2 have that will and take that risk, you deserve a medal. Enjoy bro https://t.co/M0hyD7btdl
— Sonny Bill Williams (@SonnyBWilliams) October 31, 2015
In a later tweet, the player said he had admired Line’s gusto for reaching the pitch. “For a kid 2 have that will and take that risk, you deserve a medal,” he wrote. “Enjoy bro.”
According to the BBC, Line’s parents initially wanted the teenager to hand back the medal, believing this was “the right thing to do”, but Williams, a second-half substitute who set up Ma’a Nonu to score New Zealand’s second try, insisted he should keep it.
Williams was presented with a new winners medal at the World Rugby Awards in London on Sunday night.
Williams said that had he seen one of his own younger relatives similarly bowled over, he “would have given the security guard a hiding”, an alarming thought for the unnamed steward, given the 6ft 3in Williams is a sufficiently skilled boxer to still be listed as one of the top 100 heavyweights in the world.
It was the sort of unlikely gesture All Blacks fans might expect of Williams, who began his career in rugby league in New Zealand before controversially leaving the Canterbury Bulldogs mid-season in 2008 for the French rugby union side Toulon. It was in France that Williams converted to Islam, telling CNN in 2013 that he had been touched by the contentment of a Tunisian family he got to know who lived in a one-bedroom flat with their five children.
In 2010, Williams made his All Blacks debut, winning a World Cup winners’ medal at the 2011 tournament. In 2013, he returned briefly to rugby league, narrowly missing out on becoming the first player to win the world cup in both codes.
His peripatetic career has also seen him play club rugby in Japan, where he negotiated a special contract allowing him to also fight occasional boxing matches.
Over the years, Williams has shed an early reputation for fast living – in 2007 he was photographed in the toilet of a Sydney hotel with a model – and prepared for Saturday’s final by tweeting a photo of his infant daughter, Imaan, in a tiny All Blacks shirt.
In the 2013 interview, Williams admitted to sometimes being “too serious”. He said: “I just don’t want to fail, to be honest. I don’t want to let my family down, I don’t want to let myself down That’s probably the biggest thing I fear.”
• This article was amended on 3 November 2015 to correct the spelling of Charlie Line’s name.
