Nick Cain: Let Welsh go Scott-free and return their points

Tyson Keats is innocent. Mike Scott is not. That was the only verdict that was clear in the Friday night disciplinary fog as the RFU got their hearings back to front, and handed down a faulty judgement on the eligibility storm surrounding the blameless London Welsh scrum-half as a result.
The faulty components are not just the decision to slap a life ban on Scott, the club's former rugby manager, from any involvement in rugby after “providing false and misleading information” regarding player registration, but the decision 24 hours before to put London Welsh's Premiership future in jeopardy through a five-point deduction.
The life sentence handed down to Scott by Jeff Blackett, operating as a single judicial officer, is reviewable after 10 years, but even so it was draconian in the light of other ‘rogue employee' rugby offences. The most obvious involves Bloodgate, where Dean Richards was given a three-year ban and Harlequins were free to play in the Heineken Cup the following season. Those disciplinary decisions may have been under the jurisdiction of European Cup, but they were still subject to RFU approval.
Worse still, in terms of disciplinary procedure, was the the ruling on Thursday night to give London Welsh a five point penalty which put them at the bottom of the Premiership table two points below Sale. It cannot be right that the ruling was made without the panel being aware of Scott's admission – at his RFU misconduct hearing on Friday – that the responsibility for the fraudulent registration dealings surrounding Keats was his, and his alone.
That admission should have been taken into account before any sanctions were taken against London Welsh. Instead, the RFU's decision to schedule the misconduct charge, where Scott gave chapter, verse, and line about his own actions, AFTER their inquiry into London Welsh's handling of the Keats registration, looked as if it was contrived to deny the club crucial mitigating evidence.
The RFU should explain why they put the cart before the horse, especially as Scott was central to the whole chain of fraudlent registration issues which led to the Welsh believing that Keats was qualified and registered to play in 10 Premiership matches, when he was not.
That Scott confessed that he was solely to blame for the English-qualified Kiwi being ineligible for those matches because he had not secured an ancestral visa for Keats – to which he was fully entitled – and had forged a British passport, should have had a direct and decisive bearing on the RFU panel's verdict. Namely, that because Scott had acted as a ‘rogue employee', London Welsh be absolved of any wrong-doing, and so not subject to either a points deduction or a fine.
It explains, too, why the club's chief executive, Tony Copsey, said immediately that the club would appeal, and described the the ruling as “fundamentally flawed” and the five point penalty as “extremely harsh”. The Welsh contention will be the powerful one that they were the subject to a fraud by Scott and wilfully misled, just as the RFU were. Thankfully, London Welsh have proved already that they have the legal clout to fight their corner, with a QC, Bleddyn Phillips, as chairman.
The club know already that what passes for RFU justice is no longer purely the remit of the governing body. The disciplinary officers now include representatives from the Professional Game Board and Premiership Rugby – hence the presence of PRA's chief executive, Mark McCafferty, on the three man panel for the London Welsh hearing.
The scheduling of the Scott hearing after the London Welsh inquiry is bound to raise further questions about the impartiality and fairness of RFU disciplinary proceedings – or administrative or funding proceedings – relating to newly promoted clubs.
The same questions were raised last summer when London Welsh secured promotion by defeating the RFU in the courts after the governing body upheld the restrictive ground criteria which the Premiership was using to ring-fence the top league.
With the RFU/Premiership still smarting from that reverse it was predictable that their inquiry focussed on the club's failure to manage Scott, despite the overwhelming evidence that he acted on his own initiative. By contrast, it took the view that the governing body were virtually blameless in the whole affair.
Somehow it arrived at this decision despite highlighting that the RFU registration department had received, “an illegible document that he (Scott) claimed was a copy of TK's (Keats) British passport”, on October 12.
Yet, if that document, and the subsequent forged passport presented by Scott, had been examined more thoroughly by the RFU, it is possible that the whole sorry story could have been nipped in the bud months earlier. Instead, the RFU failed to communicate their concerns to senior administrators at the club.
The panel's view that London Welsh should have been more alert to Scott's subterranean registration activities is undermined by his attempt to explain his own actions. Scott says he panicked under pressure after omitting some of the initial ancestry visa documentation, resulting in the application being rejected. Scott also mentions he was unsure of how to apply for it, “or who to ask for advice”.
This raises the question whether London Welsh, as a newly promoted club, were contacted by the RFU/Premiership and offered a detailed briefing, or any support, on registration issues – especially given that it is a complex area which carries swingeing non-compliance penalties.
Having spoken to the affable Scott over the years, mainly when arranging player interviews when he was team manager at Harlequins and Saracens, it is sad to see him snare himself and London Welsh in such an almighty mess. However, although it will bring little comfort to the club, his contrition and refusal to blame anyone or anything else for his moral compass going haywire at least does him credit – and I hope he recovers from this low point.
It is probably too much to hope, however, that the RFU/Premiership reflect on their own moral shortfall when it comes to playing fair regarding promotion and relegation. That's why London Welsh will be doing the game another favour if the RFU are knocked down again in the courts, and the five points restored.