RUGBY: JOHNNY WATTERSON talks to the Lions and Irish fullback about the controversy surrounding the substitution of Harlequins' Tom Williams in the Heineken Cup

SO, HARLEQUINS have taken the sort of hit that will send out a message and rugby, for the first time in the modern era, faces up to an unwholesome, reviled visitor. Cheating as opposed to gamesmanship, hard play, living on the edge, or rough justice has always been the impostor and yesterday the ERC Disciplinary Committee emphasised their lack of toleration for a most unwelcome close relative.

The news that the former England player, and now former Harlequins coach, Dean Richards, has been banned from rugby for three years makes the London club’s ruse of fabricating a blood injury in order to haul Tom Williams off the pitch and get kicker, Nick Evans, back on an expensive subterfuge.

No doubt the ERC, like those down in and around the Irish players training camp at the University of Limerick yesterday, were also asking “What if?” questions. What if Evans kicked the drop goal and Leinster lost the match? What if Leinster then went to the courts for recourse? What if an Irish player was asked to perform the same illicit cameo role for the good of the team?

“During the game, when you are there playing, you are just fully focused on the game at hand. Anything on the periphery, you just don’t pay a huge amount of attention to it so at the time I wasn’t aware of it at all,” says Leinster fullback Rob Kearney, who played against Harlequins.

“No, there was very little talk about it. I think everyone was just delighted that we won. Obviously had we lost it would have been a completely different story and maybe it could still be an ongoing saga but thankfully that wasn’t the case.”

The Lions and Ireland fullback has sympathy for Williams who was, in that time honoured way “just following orders” but the prospect of premeditated cheating gaining any sort of foothold in the game leaves the Irish player horrified.

“You probably would have a little bit of sympathy for the player,” explains Kearney. “But at the same time everybody makes their own decision too. I’m sure there were a couple of people at fault and I hope it doesn’t get too much into the game.”

Williams’s original ban was lessened from a year to four months suggesting that the ERC legal mandarins believed that the player spitting out red dye was merely a pawn in the bigger power play from the bench.

Still the nature and magnitude of the compromise the player was asked to become part of in the middle of Harlequins’ biggest match of the season may send shivers down the spine of many professionals. Of them all rugby is a game played for the team, almost to the exclusion of the self.

“It has probably shocked some players I think the ban that Dean Richards got was a long time,” added Kearney. “But at the same time I don’t think there is room in the game for things like that. You’d hate for the game to ever go like that and for teams to cheat to get the win.”

Kearney’s clear mind reflects the mood of players returning back to Irish duty from South Africa with his reputation enhanced. Like most he’s content to operate in the arena of a level playing field.

Despite the disfiguring infringement from Schalk Burger on Luke Fitzgerald in the second Test, the Lions tour and the Six Nations Champions illustrated that he’s more than comfortable there. Delightfully sure footed against the Springboks he’s not allowing his flattery buttons to be pushed. The kudos he received from ex-players and colleagues remains buried. “I suppose you just have to try and block that out as much as you could just as if you’d come back having played poorly,” he says. “So it’s important not to pay any heed at all to what sort of comments or praise you are getting and just approach the start of the season just as I would any other season.”

Doubtlessly in the light of the Harlequins decision, that will be as certain as his performances. But would he ever cheat as Williams was asked to do, or, would he be appalled?

“Yeah. I think I would be (appalled),” he says without a moment’s reflection. But that is a very different thing from doing it or not doing it. Williams may well have been appalled. And would he, would Kearney do it if a rogue order came from the Leinster or Irish bench?

“We’ll that’s a very difficult thing to know as well because at the end of the day the coach is your boss and if you disobey your boss there is a chance you might never get picked again,” says the fullback. “If Tom Williams had said no (to the bench request for him to feign a blood injury) and Harlequins lost, then maybe blame could have been put on him.

“It’s a difficult situation for the player and certainly I would never like to be put in a situation like that and that’s why I say that hopefully there will be no more of those antics in the sport.”

Ireland coach Declan Kidney said yesterday he will delay naming the Irish captain until close to the November international series. “The way we handled it (last season) worked well for us giving Brian (O’Driscoll) the space to concentrate on his game not other matters,” said Kidney. “I’ll talk with Brian and see how he is getting on. As you know he got laser eye surgery about two weeks ago.

“Overall though it’s not as if we are stuck for choice. We’ve last year’s Grand Slam captain, two Lions co-captains, a Heineken Cup winning captain and a Magners League winning captain in the squad.”