All in Good Spirit
by Ben Darwin | 18 August 2009 (13:39)
In the wake of the Harlequins’ fake blood injury affair in which the club was fined £215,000, given a lengthy player suspension along with their Director of Rugby being forced to resign, I thought I would share something that happened in a team I played with over 10 years ago.
A player was asked to bleed for the team. This was in order to allow a young and fairly inexperienced player some minutes on field – without risk of losing the match. If the new player did not go well, the player pulled off for bleeding would return on field within the allotted period. The player thought the coach was joking. But when game day rolled around, he was greeted by the team doctor with scalpel in hand. The player had the top of his head cut open and was promptly stitched back up.
At some point during the game, the stitches were removed, blood flowed and the player was replaced. Looking back on it now, although legal, it was pretty horrific.
It begs the question “How far would you go in order to win?” A coach constantly reviews the rules to find a way to win. At what point does it become cheating? Or rules are being exploited, are we not acting in the proper spirit of the game?
In the situation I described, nobody technically acted in an illegal way, but was it in the spirit of the game? If the Harlequins had cut the player in front of everyone, is that doing the right thing? Unfortunately the things that matter to club boards and owners hiring the coaches are the trophies in the cabinet.
Is it in the spirit of the game if a national side is full of players from other countries, who qualify by parentage and a passport technicality only?
Is it in the spirit of the game if a trainer is giving players a legal substance that gives an overt advantage to his team?
From my perspective, this where the water get very murky - between what is legal and what is fair. We all have different ways in which to judge our own actions. I know some players that will happily cheat if they can get away with it and others who will bend the laws and feel no sense of duty to the game.
In many cases it is the underdog in a game of rugby who will do whatever it takes to restore their personal pride and win. They feel they may have been so disadvantaged in other areas that they have to cheat to compete.
The answer, in my view, to what is right comes with the question "Can I sleep comfortably knowing I did this?"
In most cases, tightening up the rulebook and knowing which rules are important and which to enforce will clear the water. My feeling is that there should also be a ‘Spirit of the Game’ ruling whereby a referee can say “You know what, it may be legal, but this is not why we play the game.”
