Williams, having supposedly brought disgrace on Harlequins by independently concocting the blood capsule plan, sought advice from the Rugby Players’ Association.
They urged him to appeal, to blow the whistle on the whole plot.
But the club had other ideas. Williams was offered a new two-year deal, three years of guaranteed employment at the club once he had retired and a promise to help him build a career outside of rugby.
He just had to hold back on the real story. He had to be a team-mate once more. He had to protect the club that meant so much to them all.
The full extent of the plot, the complicity of the club’s medical staff and coaches, couldn’t come out.
“They said to me ‘do you understand the impact of this decision you’re about to make? If you come forward and show this, Harlequins will be kicked out of Europe, your friends’ playing opportunities for their countries will be reduced, Steph and Wendy will be struck off, we’ll lose sponsors we’ll lose money’,” Williams remembers.
“Playing rugby was all I wanted to do and all I felt that I could do.
“So I was stuck between coming forward and telling the truth and falling on my sword. And I didn’t know what to do.”
“I’d have taken the rap,” Ugo Monye, Williams’ team-mate at the time, tells Bloodgate. “With the deal that was supposedly being offered, 100%.”
The pressure was extreme.
Harlequins were desperate to contain a toxic scandal. Banned and branded a cheat, Williams wanted to tell the truth, explain his actions and rescue his rugby dreams.
At one point, he asked for more money in exchange for his silence; £390,000 to pay off his mortgage and a four-year contract. Quins refused.
In a statement from the time Quins chairman Charles Jillings described Williams’ demands as “exorbitant” and “shocking”. He insisted that “under no circumstances was the financial proposal a reward for Tom’s silence.”
“I’d sunk to rock bottom,” says Williams. “It was a catastrophic period from a personal standpoint.”
And all the time, the clock was ticking.
Williams had one month to appeal against his ban, to go public and get his career back on track.
Two days before the window to appeal shut, an email landed in Williams inbox.
He wasn’t the only one considering an appeal. The European Cup organisers too were unhappy that he was the only person found guilty. They knew there must be more to the case.
The chances of one young player coming up with such a scheme on his own and carrying it out in secret in the tight and tightly-controlled environment of a professional club were remote.
They wrote to tell Williams they were to appeal against Richards, Brennan and Chapman being cleared. They would call him as a witness, cross-examine him and, if he didn’t comply, level a second misconduct charge at him.
“His face literally just went white,” remembers Alex, Williams’ girlfriend at the time, now wife.
A final summit meeting with the Harlequins hierarchy was called.
Tom and Alex drove to the Surrey home of one of the club’s board. Drinks and snacks were laid out, but the conversation soon turned to business.
“We were going round and round in circles,” remembers Tom.
“Harlequins were saying to me, if I fell on my sword, for want of a better term, they would guarantee me future employment, pay off some of my mortgage, pay for me to go on sabbatical and we’ll guarantee my girlfriend’s future employment.
“On the other hand, if I came forward and told the truth they said l would bury the club.”
Frustrated, stressed and tired after three hours of back and forth, Alex excused herself for a cigarette break. As she stubbed it out and prepared to go back into the meeting, she saw Tom coming in the opposite direction.
He had given up. He would run away, leave the country, turn his back on rugby, start again – anything to get out of this situation.
Alex hadn’t finished though. She wanted to ask one more question of the 13 men in the room.
She walked back in.
“I remember the surprise on their faces when it was just me standing there,” she says.
“I said ‘I’m really sorry to bother you again, but do you mind if I just have you for a couple more minutes? I just want to ask you all individually one question’.
“I went round and I actually pointed to every single person and I just said, ‘Is this Tom’s fault?’ And each of them gave a resounding no. Every single one of them.”
“Alex humanised me again, because I had dehumanised myself, Harlequins had dehumanised me,” says Tom.
“I was a pawn by that point, and I was ready to be moved in any way that anyone pushed me.
“She was the person from outside of this tight rugby centric-environment who could cut through that.
“She said what had gone on was not my fault – what had gone on was wrong – and made people realise that.”
