The phone lines have been busy in Rugby Football Union offices this week as club officials up, down and across the country have rung in with examples of alleged malpractice. Not many have been in Dean Richards' category, writes Paul Ackford in the Daily Telegraph.
"One RFU employee told of a call he took from a club member concerned about a scam which is occasionally perpetrated in the so-called Community Game, the level at which vast numbers of amateurs participate.
"These are matches with the minimum of officials, where it is often difficult to find 15 fit players for a team. Apparently, here, if a player has been sin-binned before half-time, it is not unknown for a team-mate to swap shirts with the miscreant during the interval so that if he transgresses again the referee, acting on the number on the back of the shirt rather than visual recognition, will be conned into issuing a separate, second yellow card rather than a red.
"Another ploy, again documented in RFU disciplinary circles, is for a player to pretend to be someone he is not. This sometimes occurs where an individual has to appear before a disciplinary tribunal as a result of something which occurred in a game, only for the club to discover that they had failed to register said player. Rather than risk possible points' discussion for the omission, the club sends another properly registered team-mate to take the rap."
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