Ae fond kiss is one to slaver

BIRTHDAY CARDS fill the living room of the Govan home Alex Williams shares with his mum. He turned 26 last week, by which time the striker thought his shelves might be displaying football mementoes. These are notable by their absence. Shelf space should be cleared for a picture of Williams kissing referee Steve Conroy, though.

A whackily joyful goal celebration of his last-gasp equaliser for Ayr United as a late substitute in their all-Ayrshire Homecoming Scottish Cup tie a week ago made for more than an image to treasure. In that instant, the player truly escaped the clutches of past sore points and misdemeanours – real and imagined – to become a good news story again.

The BBC cameras are just packing up as Williams comes to the door, and he hasn't long stopped giving his Sky+ heavy duty to relive the superb first-time volley and subsequent smacker that "has built everything up to something right good" and made him "happy after all the stuff in the past that got me down". Everyone wants to talk to him about the football again, he says, probably for the first time since he was part of the Clyde team that humiliated Celtic in the Scottish Cup three years ago.

Folk have always wanted to hear what Williams has had to stay for himself. The pre-occupation, though, has been why a one-goal-every-two-games striker since his teenage years with Stirling Albion allowed his love of a flutter and fondness for a "swally" to get in the way of unleashing his free-scoring instincts in the top flight. And, of course, they have always wanted the real story behind unfounded allegations that he was part of a betting ring of Morton players who placed £10,000 on Airdrie at 16-1 to win the 2003-04 Second Division championship when the Cappielow club led by 11 points… only to finish three places below the New Broomfield teams as Williams' scoring touch deserted him.

Disarmingly candid and honest about his career downs, he seems to have a photographic memory when raking through the details of them. "They stick with me. There have been good times with lots of goals, but I can't remember them," Williams says. Such openness has probably not served him well, he says, but he can't be any other way. "I can't lie, I've said when I have done something I shouldn't have. But I have admitted to a couple of fall-outs with managers and have been tagged with all sorts of other stuff that isn't true but people want to believe," he says.

Father to 19-month-old son Alec by a former girlfriend, his problem is part illustrated by the fact he doesn't take the easy way out when it is suggested to him that, now he is "off the drink" and his betting extends only to "a £5 coupon once a week", he has settled down. "My boy is my life and I've matured," Williams says. "But though I've grown up after a lot of daft things, I still have a childishness in me. Just not too much."

Certain managers haven't been able to see past his inner kid. He was top scorer for Ayr last season with 18 goals, the fifth time in five full seasons with clubs he has been their leading marksman. But while his record was up there with Andy Barrowman and Alan Russell in the Second Division, as their streaks with "better teams" earned them moves to the SPL – Barrowman joining Inverness and Russell signing for Kilmarnock – no-one came calling at Somerset for Williams. Something the garrulous, effervescent character refuses to "be grumpy about".

"Every manager I speak to, every new one that comes to a club I'm with, turns round to me and says: 'Oh, you've been known as this and this'. And I'm left thinking: 'this is the first time I've met you, so what are other people thinking?' Now that I've really got my head down and been working so hard I'd like to think I'll get the chance at the top level. I've scored goals wherever I've played."

He dreads an SPL opportunity being permanently denied him. It is why he chooses to train with Ayr's youths on Monday and Wednesday mornings, in addition to his senior sessions on Tuesdays and Thursday nights as a part-timer earning "a half decent wage". "I go into the town to meet pals and watch games and always come across guys who say 'I could have been…' I hate the thought of being one of those 'I could have been…' players.'"

Williams couldn't have been more vociferous in his denunciation of the infamous Morton betting claims, which he says were the start of a downward spiral. "When I was called in by the manager John McCormack and chairman Douglas Rae for a second time I said to them 'this has gone too far, you have to do something about it'. I did then go to the bookies every other day and whenever I got paid, but I was the same as many young guys. If anyone had laid £10,000, a bookmaker would have a record of it. They have cameras. It was never traced because it never existed. But the muck chucked was never washed out."

He effectively received his jotters at Cappielow after admitting to being in a casino until five in the morning on a Thursday night. He was accused of being drunk. "Again I said, 'let's go to the casino and look at their cameras'. I didn't even have a soft drink in my hand that could have been mistaken for alcohol."

Eventually, after a fruitless loan with Queen of the South, he was made to train on his own with one coach making him "run and run" day after day "which I put my all into and always did as if I wanted to be there." His treatment led to him believe joining the army was the only answer.

But a trial from Clyde allowed him to get his career up and running again. Graham Roberts told him his past was of no importance and, under the guidance of the former Rangers defender and his assistant Joe Miller, he found a spirit among a group of fellow discards that gave him his edge back. Early in 2006, however, he tried out life in Australia for three months before returning home.

A "frustrating" stint at Ross County and a return to Clyde then followed before his predatory instincts found a happy home at Ayr. Currently being kept out of striking positions by Bryan Prunty and David Gormley, on the back of lay-off that resulted from having his ankle "melted" by a tackle in a pre-season game against Crusaders, he is convinced regular starts under Brian Reid – "I'm really tight with him" – will come again.

A first in weeks might even arrive in the Sky-screened cup replay at Rugby Park on Thursday, which will once more be officiated by Conroy. "That's good because he is a ref you can have a bit of banter with," Williams says. "When I went up to shake his hand at the end of the game last week, he said 'don't you kiss me again' before laughing and saying 'well done, son'."

One kiss of life for Williams' ambitions might just prove enough.