Rugby is forgiving and Howley deserves that

RROB Howley’s nine-month ban (with a further nine months suspended) for breaching World Rugby’s gambling regulations is not something to be taken lightly.

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The spectre of match-fixing is an attendant danger if coaches or players gamble on the outcome of games, and there are a few things more corrosive to the fabric of a sport than people involved in it using underhand, illicit methods to make money by influencing results.

It is why World Rugby’s regulations stipulate unequivocally that no employee in the game can bet on it – and the decorated Wales and Lions assistant coach, like everyone else in the pro game, knew the rules.

However, the crucial finding of the Welsh Rugby Union’s investigative panel announced this week was that Howley’s gambling, which involved 363 bets on a total of 1,163 matches over a four-year period from November 2015 to September 2019, was about having a compulsion to bet rather than any form of corruption.

The panel’s decision included a statement exonerating the 49-year-old, who was an outstanding former Wasps, Wales and British and Irish Lions scrum-half, of any dubious practice.

It said: “His breach of the regulation caused no damage to the commercial value, and/or the public interest in any match or tournament, (and) his breach did not affect the result of any match.”

It revealed also that Howley, who acknowledged the breach at the first opportunity and showed deep-felt, genuine remorse, had lost £4,000 on the bets he had placed.