The fact that it happened 12 years ago should save me from being cited. The onus will then be on Fenn to make a private prosecution, which would be a sorry comment on Bath and the game. “I don’t think for a minute we’re out of the woods,” Swift says “We’ve still got a very hard job on our hands.”. CONFESSING to the sin of biting an opponent doesn’t seem to be a popular pastime at the moment but, if it will help, I will own up to once sinking my teeth into the forearm of a large and extremely tough forward. If the evidence against Yates proves too scanty for a court of law, the case could remain unsolved, marking the final triumph for the spirit of omerta long practised in the “family” club.

“But I hope, perhaps naively, that honesty and truth are still there.” This week might dash that optimism. The mess says little about the new ethics of professionalism. Not the least of the ironies is that Bath, the most professional of clubs in the amateur days, have found the transition to the real thing so painful.”Players have a lot more to lose now,” Swift says. The image of the club might suffer, but you cannot compromise. You cannot drag someone in and force a confession, nor can you hold a kangaroo court and ruin someone’s career.”The Bath management have emerged from a desperate time with integrity intact.

Swift has been as co-operative as legally wise, though his club, the club for whom he rewrote the try-scoring records, has been torn apart by the conspiracy of silence in the dressing-room. The problem comes when you can’t get to the truth as quickly as you would like. They’ve been hugely upset by what’s happened, by the injury and by the fact that one of their mates has been suspended.”Friday: Mendez is removed from the citation by Scottish Bath and London Scottish deliver their reports to the RFU. Yates’s disciplinary hearings are scheduled for Tuesday [Bath] and Wednesday [RFU], and Swift reflects on a torrid week for his club.”Something like this takes the stuffing out of the club. The first principles are truth and fairness and only way I can work is to be true to those. “The remarks,” he says, “were made in a personal capacity.” The players meet for an internal meeting “Andy [Robinson] wanted to lift the players,” Swift says “It’s all hit the players very hard.

I take it as a personal insult that anyone should suggest so.” Andy Robinson disappears to Wales to talk to Neil Jenkins, the Pontypridd fly- half, about a possible transfer. Jeremy Guscott is pencilled in for his first game of the season.Thursday: Conspiracy theories surface, one suggesting that a London Scottish player might have been involved, another, ventured by Philip Bliss, Bath’s honorary surgeon, that the injury could have been caused by studs.Bliss’s suggestion is ridiculed by London Scottish and received coolly by Swift. “He’s a good guy and I wouldn’t have thought he had it in him to go round biting people.”Don Foster, the Liberal MP for Bath, criticises the club’s handling of the affair, bringing a stinging reaction from Swift “There is no cover- up. The onus is put back on to Scottish to prove Yates’s guilt to the Rugby Football Union.

“We’ve interviewed Kevin three times on three different days,” Swift says “Every time he has maintained his total innocence. He’s popular with the players, with the management and he’s got a good disciplinary record, but we were confident in our position to put some issues to a disciplinary hearing in a fair way.”Swift, anxious not to commit himself in a formal press conference, holds individual interviews. Journalists queue like in a doctor’s surgery.Wednesday: Yates receives guarded support from the England coach, Clive Woodward. It’s not the way I would have done it.”Tuesday: Yates is suspended by Bath on full pay, though Swift emphasises that the action is not an accusation of guilt. “We are not saying Kevin is guilty; we haven’t got the evidence to support that.”Yates denies any involvement, Ubogu consults his lawyers about the citation (“I would have to have had teeth like Dracula to reach him from where I was”) and Mendez also protests his innocence. “There were glimpses of Simon, but very blurred,” Swift says. “The only different angle was from a camera behind the posts but there you were looking through the full-back’s legs.