www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/simonaustin/ ... new_l.html Not too bothered about the story, however it does their credibility no good, but this line interested me: 'To illustrate this, he recalls how Richards criticised "my going down injured during play and ordered me to attend a camp with the Harlequins rugby league side to harden me up" following a League One match against Plymouth.'

www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/simonaustin/ ... new_l.html Not too bothered about the story, however it does their credibility no good, but this line interested me: 'To illustrate this, he recalls how Richards criticised "my going down injured during play and ordered me to attend a camp with the Harlequins rugby league side to harden me up" following a League One match against Plymouth.'

It's a shame we've had a few scandals this year ourselves (the game I mean not just Wigan) because RU has had all sorts of trouble

I saw an interview with Stuart Barnes on the day the ban for Richards was handed out and he said faking blood injuries in this way was common place in both codes of rugby. I've never seen or heard of this particular stunt being pulled in our game so I put it down to another example of ru getting caught with it's pants down and making sure we cop for some of their muck as well.

Union's troubles in this country are on a different level.




Read something about that. When did Barnes become a follower of the goings on in rugby league?
Would love him to have actually backed it up with some proof.

I know but we can't exactly preach when we have players in the country illegally and drug cheats ourselves.

Unfortunately he is right. The Aussies had it off to a fine art. It was one of the reasons we changed the interchange rule so that blood bin substitutions were actually counted as substitutions rather than exempt as they used to be.

Who's preaching?
Rugby union is in a mess, it's lofty, holier than thou attitude in shreds. What has that got to do with rugby league?

That's my point. If we had had no problems then we could twist this to benefit us and how people see our game.

Why twist it though?
We could use the fact that many other national sports have non-english players when rugby league is being ridiculed for having Aussies making up some of the international teams. Just look at our glorious ashes cricketers.
The disgusting events at Upton Park tonight.
But what good would that do rugby league? I'm concerned with the greatest game, not throwing stones at other sports. It does us no favours and I have better things to do with my time.

Wasn't aware of that. Did someone or one team get punished for doing it?

The poncy Union correspondant on Sky Sports News has just said live on air that Union isn't the first sport to do this and that it first happened in League.

Not disputing wheather it's true or not but he has no proof and why are they trying to pass the buck? He shouldn't be laying claims like that at Rugby Leagues door on live tv.

Typical Union.

Yeah I just saw that.

Our issue was not one of cheating as such. It was an issue of well if a prop got cut they could leave him off for as much time as they wanted, thus gaining an extra rest and substitution.

It was was open to abuse but we saw that and fixed it long ago.