“This is a competition we want to play in,” says Williams

Scarlets centre Scott Williams led his side in what a proud and determined performance against European champions Toulon.

Star-studded Toulon, who had 490 international caps amongst the first XV alone were the visitors to Parc y Scarlets on Saturday 24th January in the final game of the pool stages of the European Rugby Champions Cup.

The Scarlets were playing for pride in the jersey in the final clash of the group stages, already out of the qualification race, and they played with pride and passion throughout.

Scarlets captain Scott Williams said: “The boys gave 100%, at the end of the day they [Toulon] were just too strong.

“In fairness to them they were very good around the contact area and turned a lot of our ball over. We were on the back foot from the beginning but we stayed in the battle and were still in the game half time.

“They have strength in depth, you can’t do well in this comp with just 15 boys.”

Scarlets headed into the last two rounds of the group competition with a long injury list which included six front row players.

Williams went on to say: “We’ve lost some of our key players but we can’t use that as an excuse. We have some young boys who’ve come in, given 100% and done a good job.

“It’s for them now to keep improving, they’ll have learned a lot from the last few games. They’ll have gotten a lot of experience from that.”

Speaking of his own reflections of this season’s European campaign Williams went on to say: “I’ve enjoyed it personally, we have to focus now back on the league. This is a competition we want to be playing in.

“There’s a big focus on getting into that top six. This is the competition you want to play in; this is the highest we can play at this level.”