Vicari’s art already has pride of place in the Wales home dressing room, with one painting daubed directly onto the changing room wall and another on canvass inside the dressing room door, and his works have twice brought good luck and most importantly success in the form of Grand Slams and Cup final wins to those privileged to look upon them.
Williams is in the running for a double coup this weekend to cap an amazing year in rugby – first he is aiming for an historic win over the All Blacks after 55 years of Welsh losses and on Sunday he is in with a great chance of sealing the IRB Player of the Year Award.
A year of achievement for Williams will reach its climax at the Liberty Stadium in Swansea (7pm) on Tuesday, when the Vicari original brought to training yesterday to bring luck to the team will be auctioned amongst a host of other items from Shane’s impressive career past.
“I wanted to bring the painting down to the stadium to see if a little of the Vicari magic may give us some luck at the weekend and I made sure Leigh (Halfpenny) was alongside me just in case any of the luck rubbed off,” said Williams.
“Not that Leigh is in need of luck, he reminds me of myself at that age although he is a lot more calm and collected.
“He just needs to keep playing the way he is playing and continue to enjoy it and he’s destined for great things.”
Many of Shane’s Wales colleagues will join him for the auction next week which will also include the complete set of playing jersey’s the wing wizard wore for both the 2005 and 2008 Grand Slam seasons!
There is also plenty of Lions memorabilia and the first Ospreys shirt Williams ever wore up for grabs and, with reserve bids already in for many items in the tens of thousands and Vicari originals fetching six figure sums, he is in for quite a climax to his testimonial year.
“I’ve had a great year so far, it’s humbling just to me nominated for the IRB awards and to win it would be amazing,” he added.
“I’m hoping the auction goes well and expect the Vicari picture to be the biggest item on the night, but there is also plenty of other stuff that brings back lots of memories.
“There’s a big weekend ahead of me, but I’d obviously choose a win over the All Blacks above anything else.
“I don’t mind if Dan Carter wins the player of the year award, if no one turns up at my auction evening and even if I don’t get a touch on the ball on Saturday, as long as we win the game that will do me.”
Andrew Vicari has a history of sketching Wales’ finest rugby players. In the late fifties and early sixties he painted Wales and Lions legends Cliff Morgan, Clem Thomas and Terry Davies and more recently did a sketch of the great coach Carwyn James.
Prints of the sketch of arguably Wales’ greatest rugby coach earned more than £20,000 for the Carwyn James School of Rugby, while his triptych of record Wales try scorer Shane Williams is set to net the Ospreys wing an enormous sum for his benefit fund.
“The last sportsman I got involved with was the Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson. I spent six months going back and fore to the club’s training ground preparing the work,” said Vicari.
“It was a lot easier working with Shane and I hope he likes the finished article. He is one of Wales’ greatest sporting legends and he deserves all the accolades he gets.”
