Bloodgate: how the scandal has rugby

Williams, having presumably led to the misfortune on the harlequins, independently inventing the blood capsule plan, sought advice from the association of rugby players.

They urged him to appeal, to blow the whistle on the entire plot.

But the club had other ideas. A new two -year agreement was offered to Williams, three years of guaranteed work at the club once he had retired and a promise to help him build a career outside the rugby.

He only had to hold back the true story. It was to be a teammate once again. He had to protect the club which meant so much for all of them.

The extension of the plot, the complicity of the medical staff and the club coaches, could not come out.

“They told me ‘you understand the impact of this decision you are about to take? If you go on and show this, the Arlequins will be expelled from Europe, the game opportunities of your friends for their countries will be reduced, Steph and Wendy will be affected, we will lose sponsors to lose money”, recalls Williams.

“Playing rugby was all I wanted to do and everything I felt I could do.

“So I was blocked between coming forward and tell the truth and fall on my sword. And I didn’t know what to do.”

“I would have taken rap,” Ugo Monye, ​​Williams’ teammate, tells Bloodgate. “With the agreement that was presumably offered, 100%.”

The pressure was extreme.

Harlequins were desperate for a toxic scandal. Forbidden and marked a cheater, Williams meant truth, explain his actions and save his dreams of rugby.

At a certain point, he asked for more money in exchange for his silence; £ 390.000 to repay his mortgage and a four -year contract. Quins refused.

In a statement by the president of Quins Charles Jillings he described Williams’ requests as “exorbitant” and “shocking”. He insisted on the fact that “in no case the financial proposal was a reward for Tom’s silence”.

“I had sank to the bottom,” says Williams. “It was a catastrophic period from a personal point of view.”

And always, the watch was ticked.

Williams had a month to appeal against his ban, to become public and bring his career back on the track.

Two days before the appeal window, an E -mail landed in the Williams mailbox.

It was not the only one considering an appeal. Even the organizers of the European Cup were unhappy to be the only person considered guilty. They knew it had to be there more in case.

The possibilities that a young player is supplied with such a scheme alone and creates it in secret in the close and strictly controlled environment of a professional club.

They wrote to tell Williams who had to appeal against Richards, Brennan and Chapman. They called him as a witness, examine him and, if he had not respected, a second accused of bad conduct against him.

“Her face has literally become white,” recalls Alex, Williams’ girl at the time, now wife.

One last meeting at the top with the Harlequins hierarchy was called.

Tom and Alex went to the Surrey house of one of the club’s scoreboards. The drinks and snacks were arranged, but the conversation soon turned into business.

“We were turning and around in the round,” recalls Tom.

“The Arlequins said to me, if I had fallen on my sword, due to lack of a better term, they would have guaranteed me a future occupation, they would repay some of my mortgage, he pays me to go sabbatical and guarantee the future use of my girlfriend.

“On the other hand, if I had come forward and told the truth that they said that I would buried the club.”

Frustrated, stressed and tired after three hours of success and back, Alex apologized for a cigarette break. As he pushed him and prepared to return to the meeting, he saw Tom enter the opposite direction.

He had surrendered. He dig, he left the country, turned his back on the rugby, started again – anything to get out of this situation.

Alex had not finished though. He wanted to ask another question about the 13 men in the room.

She returned inside.

“I remember the surprise on their faces when I was alone standing there,” he says.

“I said ‘I’m really sorry to disturb you again, but do you mind if I only have a couple of minutes? I just want to ask you all a question individually’.

“I went around and in reality I indicated every single person and I just said: ‘Is that Tom’s fault?’ And each of them gave no sensational no.

“Alex humiliated me again, because I had inhumanized me, Harlequins had dehumanized me,” says Tom.

“At that point I was a pedestrian and I was ready to be moved in any way that someone pushed me.

“He was the person outside of this narrow central rugby environment that this could cut.

“He said what happened was not my fault – what had happened was wrong – and made people understand.”