COMMENT

Pre-season training is hard enough, let alone when you are facing the prospect of not being able to play any part in the coming season.

But that is the ridiculous situation facing Harlequins star Tom Williams who, at the age of 25, should be in the prime of his career.

The ERC have come down on the player like a ton of bricks by handing Williams a 12-month ban for fabricating a blood injury in last season’s Heineken Cup quarter-final with Leinster.

Their sanction appears to have imposed because the ERC had a lack of evidence with which to implicate the Stoop chain of command.

More details will become known, but it seems at the moment Williams is carrying the can for a move he probably hadn’t cooked up all by himself – and why would he?

He enjoyed his best season in a Quins shirt last year and was rewarded with the offer of a new contract to extend his stay at the club where he started his career as a professional in 2004.

An appearance in the Heineken Cup quarter-final clash should have been the highlight, but has instead turned into the stuff of nightmares.

Williams would have been pressing his claims for a call-up to the England set-up this season but, instead, faces the prospect of kicking his heels on the sidelines.

Blood replacements and substitions in the English game have long come in for criticism with regard to their authenticity and it is something that needs to be addressed.

But threatening the livelihood of a young player for exploiting a loophole in the laws that hasn’t been slammed shut or properly policed for years, is not the way to do it.