Sonny Bill to Rugby Union

He will have to refine his tackling technique

shame we won�t be seeing this at the world cup

Yea, if he doesn't then he might be spending quite a lot of time on the sidelines.

Sonny Bill Williams has officially signed a contract with French rugby.

Ten days after fleeing the NRL, Williams has signed a one-year deal with Toulon.

The Bulldogs and the NRL have begun legal proceedings against Williams in the New South Wales Supreme Court. They are trying to stop him from playing any other code and for any team other than the Bulldogs.

THE New South Wales supreme court has granted the NRL and the Bulldogs an injunction to prevent Sonny Bill Williams from playing for French rugby club Toulon tonight.

SONNY Bill Williams has been served documents detailing an injunction that bans him from playing another rugby union match in France.

The runaway rugby league star evaded process servers in the lead-up to his debut with the Toulon club on Friday night but was confronted after the game.

NRL lawyer Tony O'Reilly said he had received initial information that Williams was intercepted but refused the documents when they were extended to him.

O'Reilly said the NSW Supreme Court would be informed of the circumstances and he expects the court to accept that Williams was properly served.

"We would expect him to abide by it once he's properly served and he was, we believe, after the game,'' O'Reilly said.

"He didn't accept the documents that were tried to be handed to him so we may have to approach the court to confirm that they're happy with it.

"Otherwise, if someone didn't want to be served, you'd never be able to serve them.''

O'Reilly said the NRL will receive a full report on Monday of Williams being served.

The 23-year-old left Australia without warning two weeks ago, just one year into his five-year deal with the Bulldogs to accept a more lucrative deal with Toulon.

O'Reilly assumed Williams and the club knew the injunction had been granted and attempts would be made to serve Williams the court documents.

Williams did not travel on the team bus, he did not warm up on the field with the team and when he eventually did step on to the playing field he did so from the dressing room, Mr O'Reilly noted.

"The way they conducted themselves was consistent with him and the club having knowledge of the order,'' O'Reilly said.

"If he plays again then we will obviously be informing the court and then it's a matter for the court to decide what it does in those circumstances.''

AAP

Williams, who fled to France, despite having four years to run on his NRL contract with Canterbury, had been due to play in a Toulon trial this morning (NZ time) but did not take the field.

"A financial settlement is going to be found at the beginning of next week," Toulon president
Mourad Boudjellal told news agency AFP this morning while at the Toulon versus Toulouse match at the Mayol stadium.

Williams did not play so as not to "inflame the situation," Boudjellal added in reference to a New South Wales Supreme Court ruling which forbade Williams to play for his club.

In Sydney yesterday, Williams' former Canterbury Bulldogs teammate Hazem El Masri has admitted he felt the club may have been cursed in recent times.

With Williams's shock departure the latest in a string of dramas at the Bulldogs as they edge closer to the wooden spoon, El Masri conceded the club was at its lowest point in his 13-year career.

"The whole year's been tough," El Masri said. "You go through ups and downs, but it probably doesn't get any lower than this.

"It's amazing what things keep popping up. This is just another one. I think someone has just cursed the club over the last five years. I don't think it could get any worse.

"But every club goes through some tough times. You rebuild."

But El Masri refused to be critical of Williams for walking out on the club just one year into a five-year contract, saying: "The bottom line is it's up to him. He said he had his reasons. That's the way things go. He went about it his way � although I would have never done it that way."

El Masri made the comments on a day in which lawyers representing the Bulldogs and the NRL foreshadowed in court that they would begin contempt proceedings against Williams that could result in him facing jail or having his assets seized.

Toulon officials yesterday rejected the claims made in court that legal papers had been served on Williams after his debut last week in a continuation of the hardline stance adapted by the club's owner Mourad Boudjellal.

"That's absolute rubbish," a Toulon source told AAP.

"They haven't handed any papers to him, definitely not. I don't know where they stand legally, but they [the NRL] seem to be making a lot of noise because they can't do much more than that."

Boudjellal went further by suggesting that Williams's shock walk-out and code switch was related to wider problems at the Bulldogs, a club he didn't even know existed six months ago.

"When something like this happens, it's not just the the fault of the club or just the fault of the player - it's normally a bit of both. It's more complicated than that," he said on the club's website.

"If I was the president of the Bulldogs [George Peponis], the first question I would ask myself is why has a player left the club in these conditions?

"If Sonny Bill left us after being disgusted at what's been going on, why? If he's disgusted about what's been going on, perhaps other players are as well.

"Perhaps he [Peponis] should try and sort out his problems.

"Obviously, the easiest thing for everyone to say is that it's [about] money but that means you can avoid asking yourself the hard questions. But it doesn't mean it's as easy as that. There's a lot more to it than money."

Asked about the possibility of Williams being arrested, Boudjellal said: "Obviously the French don't have the same culture as Australia because, I'd suggest, getting arrested for that � there are a lot of far more shocking things in the world which go on that you would get arrested for before that".