Montgomery-raised professional rugby player Tom Williams has been named in the Wales Sevens squad for the forthcoming HSBC Sevens World Series being staged in France.

The Wales international fly half said he’s “super excited” to be playing in this weekend’s tournament in Toulouse which includes taking on France in their opening pool game on Friday afternoon before waiting eight hours for their second game against Fiji under the lights of the 20,000-seater Stade Ernest-Wallon.

The 25-year-old told the County Times: “I am super excited because hopefully there will be a big crowd watching. It’s the first game of the tournament. Hopefully it will be a packed-out stadium which would be great because the fans help with performance levels. The bigger the crowd the better players seem to play. So that will be an exciting one.

“Fiji are one of the best teams in the series. They’re usually entertaining games and it should be really fun playing against them.”

Williams added: “It’s probably the strongest team there’s been for a while now. There’s a lot of excitement from myself to see what we can do and do better than what we have done in previous tournaments. We had hoped to have done little better but we’re certainly getting better at every tournament this year so far.

“We’re targeting to get out of our group stages and make the quarter finals which is our main aim at the moment.”

County Times: Tom Williams training with the Wales Sevens team. Picture by WRUTom Williams training with the Wales Sevens team. Picture by WRU

Coach Richie Pugh’s side will complete their Pool B fixtures against Kenya on Saturday afternoon before the knock-out stages begin.

The long pause between games on day one poses a new scenario to overcome but Pugh is confident his squad won’t be overawed.

“It is going to be difficult but the boys who have played in France before understand that they do like their late kick-offs, they do like a late crowd, but the atmosphere will be busy,” Pugh said.

“It’ll be loud and we’ve just got to make sure that we plan the week right with later training sessions and activating the bodies at 10 o’clock at night, making sure that we’re not dozing off but what is favourable for us is that we haven’t got much of a time difference to deal with, just a short trip across to France.”

Wales’ games will be broadcasted live on Sky Sports with the first game against France kicking off at 2.12pm UK time on Friday, May 20, followed by the Fiji game at 9.33pm. The Kenya game will be shown at 1.12pm on Saturday, May 21.

Williams is hoping that the next tournament in London will give friends and family an opportunity to watch him play on Saturday, May 28, and Sunday, May 29.

“You play all around the world there’s a lot of travelling but this will be a home tournament. I’m really excited for that one for friends and family to come and watch in London.”