TOM WILLIAMS admitted asking the club’s match-day doctor, Wendy Chapman, to cut the inside of his lip after he had used a blood capsule to engineer a substitution because he feared being rumbled by a suspicious fifth official on duty against Leinster in the Heineken Cup quarter-final last April.
Chapman faces a potential General Medical Council inquiry for taking a scalpel to the inside of Williams’s mouth as Leinster officials cried cheat outside the doors of the physiotherapist’s room which had been slammed in their faces. She caused a small wound that did not require stitches, according to Williams at last week’s appeal hearing.
No action was taken against Chapman by the appeal panel and she had already been cleared of any involvement in the fake blood substitution at the original hearing.
“I would like to emphasise that, as far as I am concerned, Wendy was as much a victim in all this as me,” Williams told the appeal panel. “I do not believe that she had any prior knowledge that the fake injury was going to take place and she was put in an extremely hostile and tense atmosphere alongside me in the physio room.”
Williams said that after he left the pitch, Chapman took him to the physio’s room with the injured Chris Malone occupying the medical room.
“I heard other voices in the room,” said Williams. “I assumed Leinster officials were in the room because of the protests they had made, but I now understand that they were Kevin Stewart (fifth official) and Yvan Cebenka (the ERC match director).
“A real sense of panic began to set in. I remember Wendy touching my tooth and saying that it appeared wobbly. As far as I am aware, my tooth was not wobbly and I understood her comments to be a panicked response to the presence of other people in the room.
“I then felt someone wipe their finger across my leg: I understand now that this was the fifth official. I guessed he was wiping what he thought was fake blood to examine it.
“When we were alone in the room, I realised there was a risk someone would return to examine my mouth. If they did, it would be clear I had not suffered an injury. It seemed to me the only solution was to cut my lip and I asked Wendy to do it.
“She was not happy about it and the atmosphere was extremely tense. She was initially too gentle, and we needed to try again to open a cut. When she was successful, there was no need for stitches as it was a clean cut. She put a gauze on it and told me to apply pressure to the cut.”
Williams said he spoke to Chapman before the original disciplinary hearing.
“She expressed concern about the potential impact on her career if it came out that she had cut my lip. In order to protect her, we would say in the event of the fake injury being exposed that I had cut my own lip.”
He added that Chapman left him voicemails as he considered his appeal, reiterating her fear about the damage that could be caused to her career.
A GMC spokeswoman said last night that it had the power to institute disciplinary measures against one of its members as a result of media reports, not just complaints, but anonymity and confidentiality would remain until a hearing was held, a process that usually took several months.
Guardian Service
