Early the next morning, Tom got a phone call. Richards had resigned. Harlequins said they would support Williams telling the truth and accept the fall-out. The game was up. The cover-up would be uncovered. The truth would change lives. At a hearing in Glasgow, Williams told the full story. Richards admitted instructing physio Brennan to carry the blood capsules in his medical bag "just in case". He was judged to be the "directing mind" of the Bloodgate plot and banned from rugby for three years. Brennan admitted buying the fake blood in advance and was described as Richards' "willing lieutenant". He was banned from the sport for two years and a dream job working with England, all lined up, was gone. Harlequins' club doctor Chapman was referred to the General Medical Council. By cutting open Tom's mouth, she had contravened a central principle of medicine to "do no harm". She said she was "ashamed" and "horrified" by what she had done, but she had an unlikely supporter. Arthur Tanner - the Leinster doctor that day at the Stoop, one of those incensed by Tom's fake injury - spoke up for her. "When it transpired that she had been forced and coerced into doing it I really felt very, very sorry for her because I realised there was going to be a difficult two or three years ahead of her," he said. Tom, who had pleaded with Chapman to cut his mouth, also supported her, telling the hearing she is "as much a victim in all this as me". "It's a huge regret of mine... putting her in a position where she felt she had no other option but to do it," says Tom. Chapman was cleared to return to medicine. Of the quartet though, Williams was the only one to stay at Harlequins. At the first game of the following season, some opposition fans turned up dressed as vampires. He was targeted on the pitch, with opposing players aiming taunts, and sometimes punches, at him. There was no sanctuary in the home dressing room either. "A number of my team-mates would have been loyal to Dean Richards and felt that I'd betrayed not only him, but also them as a club," remembers Williams. "It definitely impacted them, there was definitely a level of distrust, probably dislike as well." Williams became a quieter, sadder, slower presence. The zip was gone from his game, the smile was gone from his face. It seemed he was just playing out his contract, an unwanted reminder of the past as Harlequins built an exciting new team under new boss Conor O'Shea during the 2011-12 season. "I'd lost every morsel of confidence that I possibly could have had," remembers Williams. "I wasn't in the team. I was just that person around training who had done something in the past." But, after a starring cameo in a win over French giants Toulouse, something reignited in Williams' game. The season ended with Harlequins winning their first Premiership crown in the Twickenham sun, with Williams scoring the first try in front of Alex and their young son. "It's curious how sport works, how life works out," says Williams. "You go from dead and buried to feeling the elation of being on top of the world."