’Quins winger Williams set for retirement
HARLEQUINS have announced that wing Tom Williams is to retire from full-time rugby at the end of this season. Williams, who has spent 13 years at Quins and made more than 200 first-team appearances, is to join the club’s coaching setup with a role in their academy. Williams (below) was part of the infamous Bloodgate scandal in 2009, when he left the field after biting on a fake blood capsule during their Heineken Cup quarter-final defeat to Leinster in order to facilitate a tactical substitution for goalkicker Nick Evans. The fall-out proved considerable, with Williams receiving a 12-month ban that was reduced to four months on appeal, while then Quins rugby director Dean Richards landed a three-year worldwide suspension and physiotherapist Steph Brennan was banned for two years. Williams, 31, said: ‘Time and injury have caught up with me over the last two years, and while I may have one or two regrets, I can look back on my career with Harlequins with immense pride.’ Rugby director Conor O’Shea added: ‘Tom will be missed as a player, but I know with his rugby intellect a fabulous coaching career awaits, and we look forward to watching him take those first steps at his one and only club.’
GORDON D’ARCY may have played his last game for Leinster as the veteran centre looks set to miss this weekend’s trip to Edinburgh due to the birth of his first child. The province said yesterday that D’Arcy, who bade farewell to the Leinster supporters at the RDS following last Friday’s 10-0 victory over Treviso having announced his intention to retire after the World Cup, was ‘unlikely’ to feature in their final PRO12 fixture of the season. Leinster also ruled out Darragh Fanning after the winger picked up a wrist injury which requires an operation this week that will keep him out of action for six weeks. It was also confirmed that Ireland and Lions prop Cian Healy will begin rehab from his successful neck operation in ‘two to three weeks’ and is expected to be fit for the World Cup this autumn.
WALES star George North says his recovery from concussion is ‘looking positive’. The 23-year-old wing, who suffered four head injuries in the last five months, said: ‘I am symptom-free at the moment and going through the returnto-play protocols. I am doing that over a two-week period rather than the normal one week, so that I get plenty of time to recover. ‘I am following the advice of the physios, doing everything that they advise. It is a step-bystep thing and that is what I am doing at the moment.’