Bloodgate scandal doctor 'pressured into cutting rugby player's lip'

Harlequins team doctor acted after 'panicked' winger realised fake blood ruse was rumbled, hearing told
Tom Williams
Tom Williams leads the field of play with fake blood pouring from his mouth. Photograph: David Rogers/Getty

A rugby union club doctor facing medical disciplinary charges over the so-called Bloodgate scandal deliberately cut the lip of a player pretending to be injured, but only after she was asked twice by the "panicked and agitated" winger at the centre of the plot, a hearing heard today.

Dr Wendy Chapman, an accident and emergency consultant who was the Harlequins team doctor, reluctantly agreed to slice the inside of Tom Williams's lower lip with a stitch cutter after the player realised an elaborate ruse involving a capsule of fake theatrical blood had been rumbled by opposing players and officials.

"I think I was very panicky," Williams, 26, told the General Medical Council hearing in Manchester, describing the scene in the Harlequins dressing room last April as he asked Chapman to inflict the injury. "I asked her at least twice. I may have said, 'You have got to cut my lip.' It was more of a very panicky and concerned reaction."

Chapman, 46, who is recovering from a recent operation to treat breast cancer, has been suspended by the GMC. She admits actions likely to bring the medical profession into disrepute and dishonest conduct but disputes a claim that she deliberately tried to deceive officials into thinking Williams was injured by saying he had a loose tooth.

The hearing follows one of the most bizarre and embarrassing plots uncovered in professional sport in recent years.

Harlequins were 5-6 down in the dying minutes of a Heineken Cup quarter-final tie against Leinster and wanted to switch Williams for a specialist kicker. They made the change under the blood injury rule, which permits bleeding players to be removed for treatment.

Williams was seen removing a capsule from his sock, placing it in his mouth and chewing on it before being taken off the field. He then winked broadly towards his team bench as the fake blood oozed.

The ruse backfired spectacularly: the substitute, former All Black fly-half Nick Evans, missed the late goal kick, Harlequins lost, and rugby officials began an inquiry that led to heavy fines, humiliation and bans for the disgraced player and the club's director of rugby, Dean Richards, who resigned.

Opening the case, the GMC's barrister, Michael Hayton, said the televised match was enormously important for Harlequins in terms of prestige and the eventual £245,000 prize for the competition winners.

While Chapman said in front of other officials that Williams had a loose tooth and had cut his lip it was not the GMC's case that she was party to the planning and execution of the scam, Hayton said: "She had no knowledge or active participation in it."

Giving evidence today, Williams, who had entered the field as a substitute, said he "didn't believe" Chapman had played a part in devising the plot. "As I was being brought on, Dean Richards was saying, 'You're coming off for blood,'" he said. "Later on I was given a blood capsule and instructed to bite down on it."

Questioned by Mary O'Rourke, representing Chapman, Williams agreed that he realised his exit from the pitch had been "not convincing" and he knew he had been "rumbled" by Leinster players, who shouted: "It's fake! It's not real!" That was the reason he asked the doctor to cut his lip, he said.

O'Rourke asked: "She was in fact made a victim by your actions because you brought her into it, or you dragged her into it?"

Williams replied: "As a result of the situation, yes."

Later in the hearing ‑ Chapman will appear tomorrow ‑ Williams described the doctor's initial reluctance: "Dr Chapman was initially completely against it and then, as I explained ‑ I was quite agitated and nervous ‑ I think Dr Chapman came around to the idea and reluctantly went along with it."

Asked if he had to "pursue her" on the issue, he replied: "It seems that knowing Dr Chapman I would have had to be quite insistent for her to do it."

At a subsequent European Rugby Cup disciplinary panel Harlequins were fined €250,000 for misconduct.

Williams was banned from rugby for a year, reduced to four months on appeal when he admitted faking the injury, saying Richards and the club physiotherapist, Steph Brennan, had asked him to do it.

The ERC found that there was no case to answer against Chapman but she admitted failing to tell the ERC hearing that she had caused the lip injury.

She has been suspended from her job at Maidstone hospital, Kent. If it is found that her actions rendered her unfit to practise, she could face a range of measures from a warning to being struck off. Brennan, who gave the capsule to Williams, will appear before a Health Professions Council misconduct hearing on 13 September.