NO disrespect to my infinitely more experienced and charismatic News Corp colleague Phil “Buzz” Rothfield, but there’s a glaring error in his excellent exclusive today about Sonny Bill Williams boycotting the Anzac Test.

Rothfield claims the absence of Williams will mean less bums on seats. He’s wrong. It’ll just mean one less bum on the field.

Everyone assumes Sonny Bill Williams is a drawcard. No. Williams is a great player. He has his bad games, but overall, you’d have to be drunk to say otherwise. But a drawcard? Forget it.

To be a drawcard, you need to be much more than a great player. You need to act like you care, like the game means everything to you, like the passion of the fans is something you share all the way to the atoms inside the cells inside the marrow inside your bones.

Drawcards need more than a mercenary passion for winning matches in whichever code they happen to be playing this week. They need a passion for the game itself, the belief that they are part of something bigger, part of something shared, part of something beyond their own crusade to accumulate dollars and trophies.

Ask any kid who their favourite player is and they’ll name the guy who did the flashiest thing on the field last weekend. Ask an adult and they’ll name someone who’s been around, week in week out, doing the slog, giving their all, sometimes winning, often losing, but always trying.

That person is not Williams. And that’s why nobody outside his family and friends really cares about the guy.

Not to say that Williams isn’t a trier, or that he’s a bad guy. This reporter has only met the man mountain twice, and a fair while ago at that, but found him perfectly humble.

FURIOUS SONNY TO BOYCOTT KIWIS

But always with Williams there’s the sense it’s all about him. The reason he’s boycotting the Test is about him too. He claims he is aggrieved at being wrongly and unfairly implicated in a player misbehaviour incident the last time he donned Kiwi colours.

Fair enough. But what does that have to do with a match five months down the track? Seriously, what’s the connection?

And some bigger questions: Does Williams love rugby league or not? Does he care about the fact that international matches struggle to attract a fraction of the interest of State of Origin? Does he think he could maybe give something back to the game by at least pretending to care?

Clearly he does not.

Sport is a mercenary game these days, we all know that. But look at Glenn Stewart this week. He didn’t so much walk from Manly as was prised away with a crowbar. He left not because he wanted to, but because in the end, he had to.

That’ll never happen to Sonny Bill Williams, a decent, polite guy who just happens to treat clubs as stepping stones to wherever it is he’s headed. That’s a perfectly fine way to get through the world, but you can’t expect to be popular at the same time.