Harlequins
Quinssa Meet the Playing Squad - Report Part 1
By Artemis
August 18 2009
This is the first instalment from the Q&A session. We were fortunate enough to have Mark Evans offer to join the panel for the beginning and he also stated he was happy to field questions regarding the Tom Williams/Leinster incident. For this part all the questions are answered by Mark. Before the Q&A session Will Skinner was asked to introduce the new players, attending last night were, Rory Clegg (aka the Ginger Warrior!), Lewis Stevenson (from Belfast), John Andress (tight head prop), the small but perfectly formed Gonzalo Comacho (Will’s top tip for try scorer of the season), Josh (I’m not going to try and pronounce your name and he is just coming back from a shoulder injury) and finally a young full back coming through Ross Chisholm (one for the future).
Will’s comments in italics
Mark Evans – Will Skinner, where are you? I think you’ve got to come back to the table for the Q&A.
Will Skinner – You told me not to answer any questions! (laughter)
M.E – You never laugh at my gags as much as that I just want to say a few things. I thought it was important that I came along tonight, given all the things that have happened in the last weeks. I’m more than happy to take the questions on it, I’d rather you directed the questions at me than anyone else in the club frankly. There are, obviously, one or two things I will not be able to help you with, but I;m more than happy to answer those questions that I am able to. It’s been a tough time, there is no denying it, we have taken a few hits, a bit of reputational damage….but all I’d like to say about it is, there are a lot of things that happened that shouldn’t have happened, a lot of consequences that have come out of it that have been painful for us that we would rather have not happened. But we are where we are and I think it is important that we move on, although I hate that phrase when people say it on the radio, but I can’t think of another way to put it really. There is an awful lot of stuff that will continue to be really strong, if you want to go and see the tallest stand in the ground start to come out of the ground, that’s going to make a real big change to the place, let more people in to support the team. I thought the Connacht game, last Friday night was very encouraging, a lot of very talented young players on show, I thought they looked like a Quins team and played in the Quins way, I thought that was terrific for a group of guys that haven’t played together. There is a lot of positive stuff, we have record season ticket sales over the summer break, probably more than to be expected to be quite frank, we have one or two new sponsors on board, it is not, contrary to popular opinion, it has not been a summer that has been completely dominated by one unfortunate affair. It’s dominated the media and that is understandable and I appreciate that, but I would just like to say, before you fire whatever questions you like at me, I just like to thank you for turning up to night in such large numbers, I have absolutely no idea why that has happened (laughing) In all seriousness I would like to thank you for your continued support, its very important, we’re a club that is growing and we’ve been growing quickly for a number of years now. And we have no intention of that stopping. Who’d like to kick off. I don’t want any questions from the playing staff, alright?
Q1 – Why did Williams get such a long ban?
ME – I think the panel had a difficulty, in the sense, that they would usually do comparatives to previous cases, and they found it very hard to find a point of comparison.
Audience member – Eye gouging?
ME –I know what you are going to say, eight weeks for something that could have had someone’s eye out….i’m not going to comment on that.
I think that was part of it (the lack of comparative info) I think we also hit it at a point where disciplinary issues were quite high profile amongst the ERC and IRB and other governing bodies. I think that the was context with which we were being viewed, which was not particularly helpful. I don’t subscribe to the conspiracy theory that it was all a devilish plot, I’ve always been more of a cock-up theorist rather than a conspiracy theorist.
Q2 – Is it likely that Tom can get the ban revoked?
ME – No. That’s finished. That’s done. It’s four months, no right of appeal.
Q3 – Have you started to search for or decided on who you want to replace Dean?
ME – No is the answer to both those questions. I’ve been a bit tied up!
Q4 – This is quite a big deal. If I was to translate this to the corporate world, lots of peoples heads would roll over this. This is about governance, compliance and discussion around ethics and the moral code. So I suppose that leads to a couple of questions. Did we take a hit because this is endemic in the game and the governing bodies wanted to make a point of it, but also what are going to do as a club? How comfortable do you feel?
ME – Those are two really good questions. How comfortable do I feel? A bit warm. On the first point, is this endemic in the game?
Questioner – I was just wondering if we’re taking a hit as an example to others?
ME – Oh I see, I think there is a feeling within governing bodies that the whole area around substitutions, be it uncontested scrums or sin-bins or blood replacements is a really grey area and very hard to police. Really quite hard easy to push very hard. So I think it is fair to say that when a very high profile case like this came along theory were going to go at it very hard. So the answer is yes.
DO I think we had the structures and processes in place to be able to deal with that type of issue effectively? Then no I don’t. I think I’ve said that publically, I think that virtually no rugby club in Europe has, but I think they probably will have now. We’re going to make some big changes, the players will never notice them, but we are going to make some big changes to our corporate governance structures because they were shown to be clearly inadequate. Did anyone understand that? Basically, we did not have the processes in place to deal with, as well as we would have liked to, the situation we were faced, I think that is a fair comment. That is one of things the internal review has already come out with and I think that is completely correct.
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2009:08:18:22:53:49 by Artemis.
It was a really fun evening, those of you who have suggested that there will be a problem of morale in the squad should have been there.
