Three former Bath players – Michael Lipman, Alex Crockett and Andrew Higgins – were tonight each banned for nine months for refusing a request by the club last May to take drug tests as part of an investigation into events at an end-of-season party in London.
A three-man Rugby Football Union disciplinary panel concluded the trio declined to take the tests because "the players believed there was a risk of positive results". A fourth player whose career at Bath also ended in the fallout from the London outing, the Australia second-row Justin Harrison, was last month suspended for eight months after admitting taking cocaine.
Lipman, who was in the England squad last season, Crockett and Higgins have two weeks to lodge an appeal after the judgment of the panel is published today. When charged last June with conduct prejudicial to the interests of the game, they were also accused of taking an illegal substance(s) or giving the impression that they had done so but those charges were dropped on the opening day of the hearing.
The panel, chaired by the RFU's chief disciplinary officer, Jeff Blackett, felt the players feared they would fail a drug test : "This was"either because they knew they had ingested drugs or they had drunk so much alcohol that they could not remember whether or not they had ingested drugs. Each of the players therefore decided to play for time, keep out of contact and then hide behind legal advice."
The players deny taking drugs and contended the club had no right to demand the tests with Lipman and Crockett saying they had been lured to the Recreation Ground on May 13 on a pretext and then asked to provide hair samples, but the panel decided that Bath, whose prop Matt Stevens had been suspended for two years in January after testing positive after a match for cocaine, had every right to take allegations of drug-taking seriously and take the appropriate action.
The panel said: "It is clear from the evidence that we have heard that many rumours about drug taking existed in and around the Bath Rugby squad. We heard of one instance where Lipman's name was written as part of graffiti on a Bath bridge and we heard that the management of the club had been concerned for some time about other unspecified rumours. Some players voiced suspicions about drug taking during the trip on May 10. A named player accused Higgins and Crockett of involvement with drugs (in a pub) and he did not retract those accusations on May 11 when the players met again. Indeed at least one of these suspicions turned out to be true because Justin Harrison has subsequently admitted that he ingested what he believed to be cocaine on May 10, albeit not in the presence of any other Bath players."
The trio were accused of unreasonably refusing to be tested and of leaving the club waiting on the two days when tests were requested by leaving the city, ignoring text messages and switching off their mobiles.
The bans, which were reduced by six months in each case because of previous good character, were backdated to 1 June, the day they resigned from Bath. The players' solicitor, Richard Mallett, said after the hearing: "The three are absolutely devastated by today's result which has suspended them from playing the game they love. We would like to emphasise that charges they had actually taken cocaine were dismissed at the beginning of the proceedings. They are considering their positions and it would be inappropriate to comment further."
The Bath chief executive, Bob Calleja, said the club felt vindicated, adding: "It was a reasonable request in the circumstances to ask for a drugs test. The club remains committed to taking all matters relating to drugs seriously and we are satisfied we acted correctly."
