Bloodgate

It was the cheating scandal that shook the world of Rugby Union and would bring disrepute to the game’s highest level. 12 April 2009 will be remembered as a dark day for Harlequins Rugby Football Club. With time running out in their Heineken Cup quarter-final tie against Leinster, a blood injury to Tom Williams allowed Harlequins to make a substitution and bring on specialist kicker Nick Evans to try to save the game. The fall-out from this controversial move would come to be known as the “Bloodgate scandal.” Evans was brought back on, having been earlier substituted, to try to kick Harlequins to victory. After the game it emerged that Harlequins Director for Rugby, Dean Richards, had orchestrated the change. He had given Williams a blood capsule which he then burst in his mouth to fake injury, but not everyone had been deceived. He was taken to the treatment room by club doctor Wendy Chapman, and she and Williams panicked when officials came to investigate the legitimacy of the injury.

In an attempt to cover up the deceit, Williams managed to convince Chapman to cut his lip with a stitch cutter, in order to provide a genuine injury to justify the substitution. "This is a very huge game and they cheated," she said at her hearing. "I was so ashamed of doing the wrong thing."

Harlequins lost the game 6-5 with Evans spurning a late goal attempt, meaning that Williams and Richards' plotting was in vain. However, that would prove to be nowhere near as painful as what was to come.

]. Both men were accused of cheating and were handed lenghty bans, and new procedings have opened this week to determine the extent of Chapman's guilt.
When Williams had initially gone to see her, she had no knowledge of the plot - the capsule had been passed to Williams from Richards through the physio. Now the General Medical Council have opened the hearing - based on this new information - to decide whether she should be allowed to continue to practice medicine.

The worst-case scneario for Chapman would be losing her job - indeed she has spent most the of the year since the incident on unpaid suspension and recovering from breast cancer surgery.

The trial continues