Paul Lewis: Cheating out in all forms

Cheating is its own reward. Get away with it and riches and glory can be yours. Get caught and you can crash and burn in a fiery mess.

The latter may not be a 'reward' in the conventional sense of the word but cheating always carries a cost.

That is why Harlequins rugby coach and former England captain Dean Richards has been banned from the game for three years for the infamous Bloodgate scandal in Britain. That is also why Harlequins should have been expelled from the Heineken Cup.

Bloodgate occurred when Quins were playing Leinster in a Heineken Cup quarter-final and winger Tom Williams was hauled off the field for a "blood bin" after he burst a fake blood capsule in his mouth.

The ruse was designed to get All Black Nick Evans on the field (he had come off injured) as Quins were trailing 6-5 and it was hoped Evans would land a crucial kick in the dying moments.

Williams winked as he left the field; it was caught on camera, sparking the controversy.

Leinster officials, obviously aware something was up, pursued Williams to the point the Harlequins doctor allegedly used a scalpel to cut him in the mouth, producing real blood to justify the replacement.

Cheats sometimes do prosper - though Quins didn't. Leinster won, ironically. For some, that was enough. Many think Richards' ban is excessive as is the criticism of the doctor (yet to face any charges) and team physio (banned for two years).

It was the latter who purchased fake blood capsules from a joke shop ahead of the match.

None of us should imagine that cheating hasn't, doesn't and will not be a part of rugby - or any professional sport. Of course it has, is and will. But when they are caught, every step must be taken to show the cheats and potential cheats what a price there is to pay.

Richards is a scapegoat, say some, for a practice that is undertaken at all levels of the game - using a blood bin to get a vital player on to the pitch. Others seek to cloud the issue by wittering on about gamesmanship, as if that is permissible and that cheating is really just an extension of gamesmanship.

Let's be clear. Buying fake blood capsules before a match to fake an injury to win a game is cheating. So is another apparently common ploy - cutting and stitching a player behind the ear before a match so the stitches can be cut loose during it.

The blood flows and the player is off the field to allow a vital substitution. It is malice aforethought; a deliberate attempt to affect the result of a match and cheat the other side.

John McEnroe doing his nut on a tennis court and unsettling an opponent is gamesmanship, most say. So was Andy Haden's infamous unaided dive out of a Welsh lineout in 1978.

Let's call it what it really is - cheating. All right, there might be degrees of cheating but it's still cheating. It's like doing 60km/h in a 50km/h zone, compared to someone else doing 70km/h. It's still speeding.

The only reason we don't call it cheating and that we are so relaxed about gamesmanship is that we have (all of us - not just those in professional sport), allowed the rot to set in.

The diving footballers, the fouled player who goes down as if shot, the players who surround the ref complaining bitterly about a decision (and who do so not to get a reversal, as many think, but to make sure they have influenced the ref to get a favourable call the next time), the false appealers in cricket, the claimers of un-caught catches, the feigned injury to buy time or breathing space - all cheating.

We've just dressed it up in different clothes and given it a cologne so it smells better, that's all. Let's be honest, we quite like such things when we are not the victims.

Many of us sniggered and talked about Kiwi ingenuity in the Haden incident but were outraged at Trevor Chappell's underarm delivery.

Daily Telegraph rugby writer and former England lock Paul Ackford claims the practice has been alive at international level for the past 10 years at least and quotes a passage from our own Tana Umaga in support.

In his Up Close book, Umaga writes: "In the third place play-off game against the Springboks in Cardiff [in the 1999 World Cup] I was pulled off at halftime, which I saw as a sign I'd lost the coaches' confidence.

"John Mayhew, the team doctor, wanted to cut me around the eye so, technically, it would be a blood bin. I wanted to know what was wrong with the old 'blood on the towel' trick but he said the officials would need to see a cut."

Making surgical alterations to players, as was done to Williams, is too much. That's when you know it's gone too far.

There's an old saying that football is a game for gentlemen played by thugs and rugby is a game for thugs, played by gentlemen. Not on the evidence of this case.

Rugby needed to take a stand here - to show those involved in this dubious practice there will be hell to pay. They just didn't go far enough.

Quins tried to cover the whole thing up and offered Williams inducements. They should have been expelled from the Cup, received a huge fine and given a big boot in the backside.

The rugby authorities got some of the individuals but have left the mindset intact. The message to club managements is clear: cutting and stitching fake blood bin players is okay, as long as the management had no direct knowledge of it.

It's time to make a stand. Winning at all costs is part and parcel of professional sport. So let's make sure cheats do, indeed, have to pay "all costs".