Surgeon tells court of 'Bloodgate' cover-up

A LEADING surgeon said yesterday "Bloodgate" would not have happened if he had been allowed to inspect the bogus mouth injury of a rugby player.

Leinster matchday doctor Professor Arthur Tanner said he was stopped from entering the Harlequins dressing room as his opposite number cut the lip of a player to cover up the ruse.

On Tuesday, Dr Wendy Chapman said she was ashamed that she succumbed to "huge pressure" from Harlequins winger Tom Williams who wanted to conceal that minutes earlier he had bitten into a fake-blood capsule.

His so-called injury meant a specialist goal kicker could come on to the pitch in the dying minutes of last April's Heineken Cup rugby union quarter-final tie against the Irish side, who held on to win 6-5.

Dr Chapman has already admitted almost all the charges levelled against her by the General Medical Council.

Yesterday, Prof Tanner - a former Leinster player and current director of surgery at Ireland's Royal College of Surgeons - told the GMC fitness to practise hearing that the game of rugby would "get over" Bloodgate, but Dr Chapman had "perhaps suffered a lot more".

He told the panel hearing: "Had I been able to inspect the mouth it would have been obvious that there was no injury and no-one would have had to inflict an injury.

"It would have been over in an instant. I have no doubt if we had been able to call their bluff and he was sent back on to the field then that would have been the end of it."

Williams had come on the pitch as a substitute, but came off himself with blood apparently gushing out of his mouth which allowed New Zealander Nick Evans to return to the field as a blood replacement and attempt to kick a winning goal.

Blood replacements are substitute players temporarily brought on to the pitch while players with blood injuries receive treatment.

Prof Tanner said the team's suspicions were aroused when Evans was seen warming up pitchside not long after limping off from the game at The Stoop ground on 12 April last year.

"One of the technical staff with me ran over as Tom Williams was coming off and said that cannot be a real blood injury," he said.

"I went over and it was quite obvious that what was coming out of his mouth was not blood. I knew instantaneously.

"I was remonstrating with the fourth official that there was something underhand but he was having nothing of it."