Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Sonny Bill Williams/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by GrahamColm 10:01, 24 May 2013 (UTC) [1].[reply]

Sonny Bill Williams[edit]

Featured article candidates/Sonny Bill Williams/archive1

Nominator(s): Suid-Afrikaanse (talk) 07:59, 18 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because i think it meets all of the FA criteria and is quite detailed in its content.Suid-Afrikaanse (talk) 07:59, 18 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose at this time pending significant cleanup of references. Formatting is inconsistent and some citations are missing information (particularly publisher/work). Others, such as this one, are of questionable reliability. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:18, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - I have been meaning to read this article and offer my opinion for a while. Sorry it's taken so long. At the moment I have some serious concerns. My advice is to withdraw the nomination and make a few changes before submitting as a Good article nominee. If you eventually decide you want a peer review then I'd be happy to offer suggestions at that time. I've got some comments that need to be addressed before I give the article a more thorough review:

I don't believe the lead adequately summarises the topic; nothing on background, doesn't even say when he started playing in the NRL. Also not sure about the phrase "He is particularly known in rugby league and rugby union for his ability to offload the ball in the tackle and, in rugby league, for his shoulder charges." - it's not adequately referenced and I'm not sure the tone is encyclopaedic. To add to that, haven't shoulder charges in the NRL been banned?
' As a child, he has been described as being "painfully shy" as well as "a freakish sporting talent, a competitive sprinter, a champion high jumper and cross country runner and the kid who played footy in teams a couple of age divisions above, to make things fairer." ' - by who? And that second quote is probably too long.
"Williams was a Marist Saints junior[16] when he was spotted playing in Auckland by Bulldogs talent scout John Ackland. In 2002 he was offered a contract and moved to Sydney (as the youngest player to ever sign with the Bulldogs)[17] to play in the Bulldogs junior grades.[18]" - grammar, prose, and normally have citations after punctuation
wiki-links: you link things multiple times
go from National Rugby League to NRL and back against, and don't introduce the acronym
statements such as "He also experienced Premiership success in his rookie year and became the youngest person to play for the Bulldogs in a Grand Final[17] when playing off the bench in the Bulldogs' 16–13 victory over the Sydney Roosters in the 2004 NRL grand final." - apart from the prose, you use "Grand Final" then "grand final" within the same sentence
"Williams' contract was due to expire in 2005 and he reportedly received several lucrative offers to attempt to lure him away from the Bulldogs, with the largest rumoured to be about $3 million from Super League club St Helens in the UK.[20] Williams decided to stay with the Bulldogs and signed on for a further two years. St Helens chairman Eamonn McManus later said the club had not made an offer to him.[21]" - this is un-encyclopaedic: you've mentioned a rumour (which are everywhere when NRL players are off contract), but then a very reliable source has denied it!
Having the 2013 Roosters section before the 2008 Toulon section is a bad idea. It's incredibly confusing, and I don't see any sense in segregating the article into rugby league and then rugby union sections; better just to make it chronological.
Why are there statistics for rugby league and boxing, but not rugby union?
I'm not sure about the merits of the honours section
Controversies section should be removed and the information incorporated into the relevant sections of his career and personal life
I think his international rugby union career information should be expanded—it was only brief, but international rugby is more notable than domestic rugby.

I've stopped for now. Like I said above; I'd suggest you withdraw the nomination, and fix those things before taking it to GAN. - Shudde ^talk 11:08, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Closing note: This candidate has been archived, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Graham Colm (talk) 21:15, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.