I’m glad to see, that after our exposé (Coke, Cheats and Eye Gougers) last month on those naughty teams in the Guinness Premiership, that appropriate action has been taken against two of the major miscreants.
Bath have had three of their players banned for nine months for their acts of gross stupidity following the “coke-gate” scandals. Not for the alleged taking of coke, as any tests taken were too late to confirm or deny any snorting, but for their incredibly dense actions after the event.
One of the miscreants, Andrew Higgins, is "profoundly disillusioned" and “not quite as stupid as the other two” and has decided to cut and run and retire from rugby while the other two numpties, Michael Lipman and Alex Crockett, have decided to appeal! As such, I hope that their suspensions are extended on appeal for once they started turning their phones off and running away to hide when they were asked to submit to a non evasive drugs test they came across as too stupid to be on the rugby pitch.
One of the problems of professionalism I suppose that these sort of boozed up oiks are now encouraged to play what once was the game of gentlemen.
Now, one person who was around in the non-professional era, and should really have known better, is ex Harlequins coach Dean Richards. A colossus of his time, Deano really was a fantastic player, but he was someone who you always expected to be up to some sort of sneaky activity in the deep dark places of the ruck or maul.
The affable Richards first got into trouble in 1988 when he and John Jeffrey played football along Princess Street with the Calcutta Cup and he had a few difficult times in his coaching career at Leicester and Grenoble, but there is no denying that he was a successful coach. Also in his favour, he did give us two great days out at Ravers when we thrashed Leicester on a sunny Sunday afternoon and more recently when Harlequins whimpered off the pitch after a battering by Ulster and the elements.
Deano always had a reputation as doing what was required to win, but in the “blood-gate” substitutions he went a step too far – way too far! The decision to instigate the blood substitution smacked of massive arrogance and the decision to bring on the injured Evans showed complete disregard for the players welfare. The subsequent cover up only made things worse with the naive Tom Williams being held out to dry by the coaching team and the club.
The three year ban is a massive blow but, in light of four similar incidents being revealed, it appears to be thoroughly deserved. Let’s hope he realises that he can’t bully and berate his way through this and takes it on the chin!
Harlequins can count themselves lucky that their fine was only increased to 300 yoyo’s.
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