This really isn’t the sort of thing you should go around admitting, even if you were disappointed with a poor refereeing decision. The Welsh coach, Warren Gatland, has publicly admitted that the Welsh coaching staff deliberated faking an injury to one of their props so as to force uncontested scrums during their semi-final clash on Saturday against France.

The Wales head coach has revealed he, and other members of his coaching staff, actually briefly considered cheating after Sam Warburton, the Welsh captain, was sent off in Saturday’s tense semi-final Rugby World Cup match.

The Welsh narrowly lost the game after being reduced to 14 men, 18 minutes into the game. Warburton got a red card from the Irish referee, Alain Rolland, for what was deemed a dangerous tip tackle on the French winger, Vincent Clerc.

He was served a three-match ban as a result, and will not play in Friday’s third and fourth place playoff.

Wales had already lost starting prop, Adam Jones, when Gatland and his coaching team thought out of the box for a moment:

I know a lot has been spoken about the red card. In retrospect, I can understand in any game under the letter of the law there are a number of decisions referees can make.

I just thought on that occasion, given the significance of a World Cup semi-final, to give a yellow card would have been an appropriate decision. That is why they are appointed as the top referees in the world, because they make the right decisions. I will give you an example with what happened after that.

We’d already lost Adam Jones, and we discussed in the [coaches] box whether we would fake an injury to one of our props and go to uncontested scrums.

But morally, I made the decision it wasn’t the right thing to do. We could easily have done that in the first 25-30 minutes, but in the spirit of the game, in the spirit of a World Cup semi-final, I didn’t think that was the fairest or the right thing.

That is why I honestly believe Alain Rolland made the wrong decision. Under the rules and regulations he was perfectly entitled to give a red card. But every game is different. You have to take the circumstances of the situation and the intent, and in that situation, given his experience and the role he was given, a yellow card was the right decision to make.

Gatland has since discussed the controversial sending off of Warburton with the IRB’s referees’ manager, Paddy O’Brien, but wouldn’t disclose what they spoke about.

Good ways to cheat probably didn’t come up in that conversation.

[Source: Guardian]