www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/simonaustin/ ... new_l.html Not too bothered about the story, however it does their credibility no good, but this line interested me: 'To illustrate this, he recalls how Richards criticised "my going down injured during play and ordered me to attend a camp with the Harlequins rugby league side to harden me up" following a League One match against Plymouth.'

www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/simonaustin/ ... new_l.html Not too bothered about the story, however it does their credibility no good, but this line interested me: 'To illustrate this, he recalls how Richards criticised "my going down injured during play and ordered me to attend a camp with the Harlequins rugby league side to harden me up" following a League One match against Plymouth.'

It's a shame we've had a few scandals this year ourselves (the game I mean not just Wigan) because RU has had all sorts of trouble

I saw an interview with Stuart Barnes on the day the ban for Richards was handed out and he said faking blood injuries in this way was common place in both codes of rugby. I've never seen or heard of this particular stunt being pulled in our game so I put it down to another example of ru getting caught with it's pants down and making sure we cop for some of their muck as well.

Union's troubles in this country are on a different level.




Read something about that. When did Barnes become a follower of the goings on in rugby league?
Would love him to have actually backed it up with some proof.

I know but we can't exactly preach when we have players in the country illegally and drug cheats ourselves.

Unfortunately he is right. The Aussies had it off to a fine art. It was one of the reasons we changed the interchange rule so that blood bin substitutions were actually counted as substitutions rather than exempt as they used to be.

Who's preaching?
Rugby union is in a mess, it's lofty, holier than thou attitude in shreds. What has that got to do with rugby league?

That's my point. If we had had no problems then we could twist this to benefit us and how people see our game.

Why twist it though?
We could use the fact that many other national sports have non-english players when rugby league is being ridiculed for having Aussies making up some of the international teams. Just look at our glorious ashes cricketers.
The disgusting events at Upton Park tonight.
But what good would that do rugby league? I'm concerned with the greatest game, not throwing stones at other sports. It does us no favours and I have better things to do with my time.

Wasn't aware of that. Did someone or one team get punished for doing it?

The poncy Union correspondant on Sky Sports News has just said live on air that Union isn't the first sport to do this and that it first happened in League.

Not disputing wheather it's true or not but he has no proof and why are they trying to pass the buck? He shouldn't be laying claims like that at Rugby Leagues door on live tv.

Typical Union.

Yeah I just saw that.

Our issue was not one of cheating as such. It was an issue of well if a prop got cut they could leave him off for as much time as they wanted, thus gaining an extra rest and substitution.

It was was open to abuse but we saw that and fixed it long ago.

Very lazy cheap shot it was too

Blood letting (!) to get a player off has been done in Union for a while and I believe England removed some stitches from a player to do this once for example.

The real problem is the cover up. I read an article in the Times today about it and it was the players take on what happened.

Basically he was kept in the dark by the club as to what the consequences were, was encouraged to lie at the hearing and when he picked up a 1 year ban was totally shocked and didn't even think he was in line for such punishment with the club saying he would just get a fine.

Then when it came time to appeal the club tried to persuade him to just appeal the length of the ban not the ban itself but because it was the club who put him up too it he felt he could appeal the ban if he came clean on what went on.

When he said he wanted to do this they offered him a two year extension to his contract after the ban, guaranteed selection based on merit, a job with the club for 3 years after he retired and that they would look after him once that was over. They basically tried to buy his silence and went on about the consequences of what would happen to the club if he told the truth. They put him under enormous pressure to take the rap when it was others who put hum up too it.

He could not live with the idea so insisted he was going to tell the whole story and so eventually the club came clean and that is why Dean Richards has got a 3 year ban etc. It is probably one of the worst things I have read about in sport and it took up the back three pages of the Times so for once Union is getting a deserved bad press.

Dave

Union have made their bed and it is amusing to watch their "media boys" trying to wriggle them out of it during there press & tv spots.

exactly. since 2003 they have preached the moral high ground to football and its so funny now to read the sh#t hitting the fan.

Let's face it, in league players do all they can to avoid going off with a blood injury - look at Luke Robinson recently with that cut above his eye and he was still trying to feed the scrum.

Clearly we should all enjoy the fact that Union is once again the poor relation when it comes to the toughest code.

Maybe a T Shirt idea - Union players hide blood pills to get off the pitch, League Players hide real blood to stay on!!

I'm sure Pemps could come up with something.

I am not sure just what the current state of play is as regards sanctions to be placed on Quins RU but there has been talk of them being booted out of the Heineken Cup or even top flight competition completely.

I doubt they would go that far but we should not be so quick to laugh as this could affect the RL side in that aren't they both part of the same company?

Dave

Has anyone read any of the 30-odd page appeal? I read bits and pieces of it, mainly because I seem to have missed all this, but in the middle of that the player states that he was forced to attend a weekend of training with the Harlequins Rugby League side to toughen him up





As for the whole incident, it's pretty shocking, but I've no sympathy after that t*sser of a PR guy tried to say it was going on in League first. What a pathetic thing to say! "Those poor northen boys started it mummy, we thought it was OK"

I saw that too


Funny how on Monday his captain said that the whole squad were behind Williams and believed and trusted him. Yet on Wednesday the same captian was questioning Williams acoount of events after the player dragged the CEO and another board member into it.


Completely irrelevant yet Sky Sports carried that line. They are fast turning into the Daily Star of television.