Sonny Bill Williams has reflected on his transformation from party boy to devout Muslim and family man as his infamous ‘toilet tryst’ with Candice Warner 15 years ago is relived.
The sporting superstar was celebrating a win with his Canterbury Bulldogs teammates in 2007 when he and the then-ironwoman were busted together in a men’s toilet cubicle at Clovelly Hotel in Sydney.
A pub patron snapped a photo and leaked it to the media.
Now the scandal is back in the headlines once again, as Warner spoke out about the fallout she copped, that left her on the brink of taking her own life as she promotes her new autobiography.
Williams quickly moved on from the scandal after turning to Islam in 2009 and marrying his wife Alana two years later.
But Ramadan prompted him to reflect on his wild past on his way home from the mosque early one-morning last week.
Sonny Bill Williams ditched his partying lifestyle to become a devout Muslim and family man
Williams had just spent the hours before sunrise at the mosque reading the Quaram and praying with his ‘brothers’.
‘I used to leave the nightclubs after sunrise now I leave the musjid after fajr prayer. Wallah what a way to start the day, life’s truly a blessing,’ he tweeted.
He then reflected on his past in a follow video.
‘What a feeling it was,’ he said.
‘It had me thinking about the time I would leave the city and the nightclubs after sunrise, and it wasn’t a great feeling.’
‘I used to leave the nightclubs after sunrise, now I leave the musjid after fajr prayer.
Williams also recalled a fleeting encounter with a fellow Muslim on his way home.
‘Driving home, I stopped at the lights, and I heard the Quran playing in the car next to me, so I wound down my window.’
‘He couldn’t speak English, didn’t know who I was, but we just looked at each other and nodded.’
‘He touched my heart. That is what true brotherhood is.’
Williams has also revealed how he and his wife have spent the last month reading the Quran before Ramadan ends on Friday.
The couple have four children.
Sonny Bill Williams is pictured with his family
‘We both challenged each other to finish the Quran during the month, and although she beat me – just,’ he said.
‘I can’t remember feeling more content for a long time. Knowing you and your partner are on the same path/purpose is special. Blessings to you and yours my friends.’
Williams previously revealed his life was spiralling out of control at the time of his ‘humiliating’ toilet tryst with Warner.
He was in a relationship with another woman at the time, while Warner was single.
‘There was an incident in a nightclub in 2007, when I fooled around with a woman in a toilet stall,’ he said.
‘Both she and I will have to live with that mistake for the rest of our lives. It made headlines around a good part of the world,’ Williams wrote in his 2021 autobiography ‘You Can’t Stop The Sun From Shining’.
‘It was embarrassing, and not just for myself. There’s the woman involved, of course, though she was a single adult woman and so it really was no one else’s business what she did.
‘But I had a girlfriend at home who was publicly humiliated as well as suffering the pain of being cheated on. She surely did not deserve to be at the centre of a media storm.’
Sonny Bills Williams was playing with the Canterbury Bulldogs at the time of his toilet tryst with Candice Warner in 2007
Williams also opened up on a three-day drinking bender that began Friday night and continued through to Monday morning.
‘The only reason I came home is I knew I had a surgery appointment at 11am,’ he wrote.
‘I don’t remember anything about the operations except waking up having my girlfriend crying next to the bed, and the doc really gave it to me, telling me I had so many drugs in my system I could have died.’
In an interview on Sunrise on Wednesday while doing publicity rounds for her memoir, Warner was asked by host Natalie Barr if she had ‘thought about coming out straight away’ when the scandal broke.
Warner said the media attention and subsequent apology she had to issue was due to women not having a ‘voice’ at the time.
The toilet tryst has hounded both her and her husband, cricketer David Warner, who was notably mocked about the incident during Australia’s cricket tour of South Africa in 2018.
Former ironwoman and wife of David Warner, Candice Warner (pictured) has been forced to relive the scandal this week while promoting her autobiography
‘We lived in a society where we didn’t have the voice, women didn’t have the voice that we do now’.
‘This was 16 years ago,’ Warner said.
‘I was forced to apologise, I was single, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nowadays that just wouldn’t happen…
‘Our society has changed, it still has a long way to go but I feel like as a woman, I have the confidence to be able to tell my side of the story and be heard.’
She said she wrote her memoir, Running Strong, in part for her three daughters ‘who in time will be able to read the book’.
‘I wanted them to get a better understanding of my story without any interference’s or judgement from outside.’
Warner insisted that she did not have sex during her infamous ‘toilet tryst’ with the footy star.
‘We kissed. We kissed in that cubicle and who knows what could have happened? Maybe things may have eventuated, I don’t know, and I will never know,’ she told The Project.
The 38-year-old says that she regrets not stopping the photographer and deleting the image.
‘What I do know is that I probably could have stopped that photograph going out,’ she said.
‘I should have just picked that phone up and deleted it. I shouldn’t have gone into the men’s bathroom, but I can’t change any of those things.’
When asked if she second guesses her decision not to intervene, Candice replied: ‘I still do. But I can’t change that.’
‘It is really real for me. It is the pain that I caused my family. It is the pain and hurt – like, it was so deep.’
She also spoke out about how she was close to ending her life following the scandal.
‘I got so close to ending it,’ she told this week’s issue of Stellar Magazine, while breaking down it tears.
‘The only thing I did wrong was go into a place I shouldn’t have been. That was it. Yet it ruined my life. It ruined parts of my family’s life – years we can never get back’
Warner went on to say that she dreads explaining the tryst to her young daughters when they are old enough.
‘It’s so hard to put into words without bursting into tears because it was so painful. It still is,’ she said.
‘One day I’m going to have to explain to my girls what it’s all about. That’s heartbreaking’.
Candice shares daughters Ivy Mae, eight, Indi Rae, seven, and Isla Rose, three, with Australian cricketer husband David Warner, 36.
The Ironwoman said that she lost work and ‘no-one respected her’ after it was made public.
‘I still carry that scar and hurt. My family had to be humiliated… it changed their lives,’ she said.
The shocking incident, in which she was photographed in a compromising position with Sonny by a peeping Tom, stirred up a huge media storm.
