Wales coach Warren Gatland has admitted that he was so stunned as losing his inspirational captain Sam Warburton to a red card that he considered faking an injury to create uncontested scrums.
Warburton went off in the 18th minute of Saturday’s 9-8 semifinal loss to France for a dangerous tip tackle on winger Vincent Clerc and Gatland admits that he considered cheating by depowering his scrum in the World Cup semifinal against France.
Wales had already lost prop Adam Jones to a calf injury when Warburton trudged off after referee Alain Rolland made a snap decision to expel him on the spot.
“We’d already lost Adam Jones, and we discussed in the box, could we fake an injury to one of our props to go to uncontested scrums?”
Gatland admitted Tuesday after naming his team to face Australia in Friday’s third-place match. “But morally, I made the decision that that wasn’t the right thing to do.”
With a man missing from the scrum, Wales had to use center Jamie Roberts as a loose forward on each of its own feeds to ensure it retained the ball. On the French feeds, Roberts stayed in the backline to defend, leaving seven Welsh forwards to be pushed off the ball by an eight-man scrum.
An uncontested scrum would have taken the setpiece out of the equation, allowing Roberts to take his place in the backline at all times.
Deliberately depowering the scrum is frowned upon in rugby, which has had its share of teams trying to manipulate the rules in recent years.
England had to suspend two coaches during this World Cup amid ball tampering allegations, when they switched balls before Jonny Wilkinson took conversions in a pool match against Romania.
The code was rocked two years ago by a fake injury in the so-called “Bloodgate” scandal in England, when Harlequins winger Tom Williams bit into a blood capsule during a 2009 Heineken Cup quarterfinal against Leinster to enable a specialist kicker to be brought on as a so-called blood replacement.
Quins was fined an unprecedented 300,000 Euros (then $429,900) by a European Rugby Cup panel in October 2009.
Dean Richards left as Harlequins director of rugby and was banned for three years after being held responsible for the incident.
Nice to see his honest opinion… and ultimately he did not cheat… good on you Gatland!
Had the shoe been on the other foot, would France have done the same? I hope so, but agree, ‘good on you Gatland’
Amazingly, it seems the IRB knives are out for Gatland – They’re “stunned” apparently- well here’s something thats likely to cause a few heart attacks at IRBHQ – OTHER COACHES HAVE THOUGHT THE SAME THING, IT HAS EVEN BEEN DONE IN A MATCH! Wow, that’ll have them all reeling in the corridors of rugby. Who’d have thought hey. I do hope that I am not the cause of a few funeral pyres, I tried to whisper it, but a loud voice deep within me just took over, sorrrrrrry
Neels Liebel now also facing the wrath of the IRB for his Paddy O’Brian outburst
One must remember that the IRB is comprised of the respective representatives from all the rugby countries including South Africa. They are not an alien organisation from Mars. The individual countries like to blame the IRB for everything conveniently leaving out that they are the IRB!
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