Harlequins verdict: Comment

So now we know.

There is no longer anyone in professional rugby willing to uphold any longer the cause of right over wrong. A sport once renowned for its impeccable standards of behaviour and discipline has sunk into the trench where some other sports, once derided by rugby as lesser species, have resided for so long. How the mighty have fallen.

The stench from the trench has been hugely magnified by rugby’s behaviour in the light of blatant cheating by Harlequins. But what is worse is the pitiful, cowardly response of ERC, the organisation charged with running what was once known as European rugby’s premier tournament.

No longer. The Heineken Cup can now be called the Cheats Cup, because Harlequins have been cleared to continue playing in the tournament. Convicted, confessed cheats allowed to play on in a major tournament which they tried to ridicule and destroy by their actions ? You just couldn’t make this up.

It’s hard to know who is the most culpable, the original cheats from the London club or the pathetic creatures sitting in judgement on the ERC board who could not bring themselves to do what every fair-minded person in sport who has retained their honesty and sense of decency knew what was inevitable; namely,  remove ‘Quins from the Heineken Cup. 

Only ERC plus Harlequins and its apologists believe the club should have received the green light to continue playing in a tournament they treated with such disgraceful cynicism. The rest of sport is mystified by this eagerness to welcome back cheats.

But what sort of message does this send to the game and indeed the entire sporting world? Briefly, that rugby tolerates cheats who can expect nothing worse than a financial penalty for their misdemeanours. What a grotesque abrogation of their duties as custodians of the game, what a dereliction of duty.

Of course, ERC did what some always suspected they would do. They chickened out by finding a convenient scapegoat and loading every single ounce of blame for the affair on his shoulders. Most convenient that he had already been thrown out of the game for three years.

But what ERC failed to answer were these questions. Why have Harlequins been allowed to continue in the tournament when so many others apart from Dean Richards have also been involved? How is it that it eventually came out that Harlequins had originally done everything in their power – and we’re not talking just about Richards here – to obfuscate, block and frustrate ERC’s original enquiry? How is it that they do nothing when other officials named by Tom Williams allegedly offered the player riches to cover it all up and take the rap single handed?

If Harlequins are generally clean and this was all down to Richards, why did the Chairman, Charles Jillings, resign?  That very act told you this rotten affair permeated just about every corridor of the London club.  At least he, unlike the Chief Executive, was man enough to accept his responsibility and fall on his sword. Rugby in general can have only contempt for a man in the Chief Executive’s role who tries to sit on the fence and weave in the wind to avoid any of the blame.

But maybe such behaviour is to be expected of certain individuals. What was not expected was the way ERC capitulated in their duty to uphold the good name of the game and its image of decency. By their actions, they have helped Harlequins destroy that.

Had the appropriate organising body stood up and said ‘We simply abhor this behaviour and a very severe example must be made of those who go down this particular road’, both ERC and rugby football would at least have salvaged something of its dignity from this shocking affair.

Alas, we have seen the complete opposite from ERC. It is a tragic day for rugby football, the world over.

ENDS.................................... 

Rugby’s fake blood saga history

Rugby has had a fake blood issue for more than eight years yet done nothing about it, a former England coach has revealed.

As the Harlequins ‘Bloodgate’ issue continued to reverberate around the sport, ex-Harlequins and England coach Dick Best admitted that the issue had been a factor years ago, even whilst he was still coaching.

Best, who was sacked by Harlequins in May 1997, said “Eight years ago, I said this was evident in the sport. Yet no-one did a thing about it. In those days, people were coming off the field on a Saturday with blood injuries yet playing the following Wednesday with no stitches or sign of any injuries.

“I used to think to myself, hello. Because if you get a bad cut anywhere on your body, the last place you want to be three days later is on a rugby field. But players were coming and going all over the shop.”

The furore that has broken since it was revealed Harlequins then Director of Rugby Dean Richards ordered the club’s wing Tom Williams to bite on a blood capsule late in the Heineken Cup quarter final against Leinster last April, has hugely damaged the sport’s reputation worldwide.

But Best’s ire is directed mainly against those in administration who did nothing to nip the problem in the bud all those years ago.  “I am not defending Dean Richards. But he got caught. What is surely the more relevant point is, why has nothing been done in the game about this problem ?

“The game’s administrators are to blame for the fact that it has gone on. In fairness, they have probably not known about it because they are not that close to the sport. This is happening, and has happened for a long time, at the hard edge of the sport where winning and losing is a fine line, an area reserved for those in the trenches.

“The game’s administrators are so out of touch they have only just done something about the de-powering of the scrums and that’s been going on for a long time, too. France brought in a rule of their own back in 2007 to try and stop a plague of uncontested scrums.  Their new ruling reduced the number of de-powered scrums from 145 in one season to just two, the next. But it’s only now that the IRB are doing anything about it.

“Although the blood issue was evident years ago, it just went away because no-one did anything about it. But you have to ask, who does the responsibility to take action fall under ? If it isn’t the IRB, who is it ?

“I am not defending Harlequins in any sense but I will say, they are not alone in this. It is not too strong a word to say this has become widespread in rugby. It is systematically used as and when required. Harlequins themselves have admitted using it five times in 30 games. That gives you quite an idea about how much it has been going on because as I say, they are certainly not the only ones.”

Best admitted the game had been damaged by the whole affair. “There has always been this holier than thou attitude in rugby union. We always saw ourselves as above everyone else. But all that has gone now because we have given others with axes to grind the opportunity to criticise us. It’s our own fault for not having sorted it all out years ago.”

ENDS.......................................

Comment by Peter Bills

How sad.  How profoundly sad and dispiriting................

Harlequins, a club that has dragged rugby union’s uniquely special name into the gutter of the sporting world, have escaped a ban from the Heineken Cup despite the appalling antics of some of their employees. After all, are we not entitled to view the entire episode and behaviour of the London club as a conspiracy to defraud?

ERC, the body that has worked so hard and tirelessly to promote its excellent premier competition, the Heineken Cup, have done immense damage to their own competition by their refusal to invoke the only sanction Harlequins genuinely feared: expulsion from the tournament for a year or two.

They have been spared the ultimate ignominy their cheating more than merited because ERC, a body we had thought would rush to uphold the good name not just of rugby but also its own competitions, have gone wobbly at the crucial moment.

It is my understanding that Harlequins have survived chiefly because senior ERC officials believed it was too late to undo ticketing and travel arrangements affecting the London club in this year’s competition. How craven and weak-kneed an attitude is that ?

Instead of focusing on the huge damage to the game and their own tournament by allowing Harlequins to stay, ERC have hidden behind petty details to avoid taking the hard decision. How depressing a scenario...........

Just when we thought we had a tournament of true magnitude, an event to hold up before all others in the sporting world that would serve to inspire young people everywhere and attract them to the game, we see an event run by an organisation afraid to ignore all other considerations and just do the right thing for the game.

For this decision went far beyond the confines of ERC, the Heineken Cup or English rugby. A ban, the only truly meaningful punishment for what Harlequins did, would have sent a message loud and clear not just to the entire game but to every individual tempted to cheat in the professional code.

As Lawrence Dallaglio of London Wasps said, Harlequins had their fine increased by just over £40,000 by the second hearing which at last began to unravel some of the truth. Well, big deal. Harlequins will be laughing all the way to the bank about that.

Entry into the Heineken Cup with four guaranteed home games in a season is worth about £1 million each season to a leading club. Had Harlequins been banned from the competition for two years, as any sane, un-biased person would have believed inevitable for their deceit, it would have cost them £2 million. Maybe more, from the damage to their brand name and perhaps sponsors invoking clauses that surely exist in sponsorship agreements about anything detrimental to the sponsoring company’s name bringing financial penalties or even possibly termination of the contract.

Was this another reason why ERC defied general belief and refused to ban Harlequins ?  Were they afraid the club could hit serious financial trouble ? Were they protecting their ‘friends’ at the club, people in high places ?

For as Dallaglio rightly pointed out, Wasps were thrown out of the competition a few years ago for fielding an ineligible player. Clearly, in the eyes of ERC, that was a more serious offence than blatant cheating of this kind. What are we to make of rugby’s muddled values ?

This is simply not a credible decision by ERC. But it is one that reveals they are totally out of touch with the real rugby world and the feeling of genuine anger among so many people who love and support the game.

Are we not further entitled to ask why, if as some allege there was a genuine conspiracy to defraud by Harlequins, ERC have not sent the papers to the police ? Such would be a criminal act; why would ERC not wish to comply with the law of the land and ask the police to investigate ?

Harlequins have shown little desire to sweep away the whole management structure of their club and start afresh. They have allowed just three individuals to take the entire rap for this tawdry affair. What they are saying is that no-one else at the club, not even a Chief Executive Mark Evans who, throughout all his previous career in the game was a Director of Rugby, ever went into the dressing room, never talked to the players or Director of Rugby and certainly never knew anything at all about this whole issue which has, it now turns out, happened several times previously at the club.

What a mess. The ERC’s first Tribunal chickened out of the real issue, beggaring belief by everyone involved in rugby, by accepting that no one except Tom Williams actually did anything wrong. When the rugby world picked itself up from falling about laughing and demanded a re-examination which did not assume that rugby after all was only a minority sport for the mentally-challenged, the next step in this sporting farce was for someone else to put his head on the chopping block.

Step forward the next man to draw the short straw, Dean Richards, rugby's man of steel who was never known to take a step backwards and who’s legendary success on and off the field had been based on the transparent simplicity and honesty of his personality. A less likely candidate for the role in which ‘Quins now cast him, as the sole inspiration for rugby athletes to serve their club by running around with capsules in their socks, it is hard to imagine. In fact, if my memory is correct, Dean was famous for wearing his socks around his ankles, because no-one could design a pair of sock to defy gravity around his mighty calves.

But the second Tribunal, perhaps unwittingly, but certainly unavoidably, created a new issue and appear to have turned a blind eye to it. When Richards turned up to avoid cross-examination by pleading guilty, what had been a case of an individual cheating became a conspiracy.

Lastly, perhaps the most astonishing thing of all is that esteemed, international business companies like Etihad Airways, who sponsor Harlequins, and Heineken, who sponsor ERC’s premier competition, wish to be associated with this foul, unsavoury affair.

 ENDS.............................................

IRISH INDEPENDENT WEB SITE   

Australia 18pts New Zealand 19

By Peter Bills

South African referee Jonathan Kaplan gave an outstanding display of calm, controlled yet disciplined officiating as New Zealand snatched the Tri-Nations Test in Sydney in the 79th minute.

Kaplan played the decisive act in the final moments by penalising Australia for not releasing the ball, when they were caught in trouble near their own line with the rampant All Blacks hunting the killer blow. Kaplan rightly decided the Wallaby defenders had clung on too long and handed New Zealand a crucial penalty.  Dan Carter kicked it, his fourth of the game, to snatch a single point victory for the under pressure New Zealanders.

It was a dramatic end to an increasingly dramatic Test match which Australia had led 12-3 at half time, four Matt Giteau penalties to one by Carter.  It seemed for long periods as though the Wallabies, who face South Africa in Perth this coming Saturday, would get home on the back of some tremendous, structured defence.

But New Zealand’s forwards took charge in the second half, upping the tempo and posing more problems for the Australians. They also cut out many of the errors they’d made in the first half and which had prevented them gaining rhythm or momentum. The only try came in the 65th minute, made and scored by substitute Ma’a Nonu, after he cleverly supported a run by Sitiveni Sivivatu.  Carter converted.

Where Kaplan impressed was in his consistency and refusal to allow players to kill the ball at the breakdown.  This increasing blight on the modern game is cynical and a major turn off to spectators. Weak refereeing has allowed too many players to get away with it but Kaplan showed that, if an official is prepared to be strict as well as fair and consistent, most players soon get the message.

Such an example of proper, tough refereeing has been long overdue in the game.

Kaplan warned All Black captain Richie McCaw just before half time that he was within an ace of resorting to yellow cards, after New Zealand half-back Jimmy Cowan played the ball from an offside position. When Australian No. 8 Richard Brown made a dangerous tackle two minutes into the second half, he received the yellow card.

Because Kaplan had patiently yet firmly laid down the law and strictly enforced it throughout the first half in Sydney, we saw more attempts at attacking rugby, players running with ball in hand,  than we’d seen by South Africa in their three home Tri-Nations matches in recent weeks. The Springboks have shown that they have little interest in playing a 15 man game but in fairness to them, they have hardly been encouraged in  that respect by seeing so many so-called top referees cravenly allowing players to kill the ball on the ground.

Kaplan showed from the start in Sydney he was not prepared to tolerate that and the outcome was much more attacking play.  None of this seems rocket science to most of us but I have been amazed, and profoundly depressed, by most officials’ reluctance to take on the offenders and sort them out. Kaplan’s performance in Sydney ought to be a clarion call for others in his business to do likewise and get tough. The game prospers from it.

The South Africans will have watched closely this Australian performance with next Saturday’s Test at Subiaco Oval, Perth, in mind.  They will have noted the Wallabies’ inability to score any tries, relying too much on Giteau, who landed six penalties. As long as the Springboks cut out individual errors and play with discipline, they can negate the Giteau factor.

Australia’s attacking play was hampered by the loss of centre Berrick Barnes at half time. But they rarely found the creativity to break through and when the All Blacks’ forwards got on top in the second half, the Wallabies could only cling on, relying entirely on their defence for survival. It wasn’t quite enough and South Africa will set out next week to get on top again up front. That, surely, will once more be decisive.

It was a tense finish in Sydney and it was true, there was the intent to achieve much more running rugby than we’d seen by the Springboks. But there were also far too many mistakes and individual errors to call it a high class Test match.  The Springboks look in a class of their own in this year’s Tri-Nations competition and they should complete the job by winning in Perth next weekend.

Scorers:

Australia:

Penalty Goals:  Giteau (6)

New Zealand

Try: Nonu.

Conversion: Carter

Pen. Gls: Carter (4)

Yellow card: R. Brown (Australia)

TEAMS:

AUSTRALIA: J. O’Connor (sub. P. Hynes 46 mins); L. Turner, A. Ashley-Cooper, B. Barnes (sub. R. Cross 40 mins), D. Mitchell; M. Giteau, L. Burgess (sub. W. Genia 76 mins); B. Robinson (sub. B. Alexander, blood, 22-24 mins), S. Moore (sub. T. Polota-Nau 22-32 mins, blood; 51-54 mins, blood and 65 mins), A. Baxter (sub. B.  Alexander 32 mins), J. Horwill, N. Sharpe (sub. D. Mumm 67 mins), R. Elsom, G. Smith (Capt.), R. Brown (sub. D. Pocock 60 mins).

NEW ZEALAND: M. Muliaina; J. Rokocoko, C. Smith (sub. M. Nonu 40 mins), L. McAlister (sub. M. Nonu, blood, 3-11 mins; sub. S. Donald 50 mins), S. Sivivatu; D.  Carter, J. Cowan; A.  Woodcock, A. Hore, O. Franks (sub. J. Afoa 66 mins), B. Thorn, I. Ross, J. Kaino (sub. R. So’oialo 65 mins), R. McCaw (Capt.), K. Read.

REFEREE: J. Kaplan (South Africa)

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