BRITISH GMC HEARING:THE MATCH-DAY rugby doctor at the centre of the "Bloodgate" fake injury scandal said yesterday she was "ashamed" of her role in the event.

Dr Wendy Chapman said she still could not understand why she succumbed to “huge pressure” from Harlequins winger Tom Williams, who asked her to cut his lip as a cover-up after he bit into a fake-blood capsule.

His so-called injury meant a specialist goal kicker could come on to the pitch in the dying minutes of the April 2009 Heineken Cup quarter-final tie against Leinster, who held on to win 6-5.

The doctor admitted for the first time on Monday she cut the player with a stitch cutter in the changing-rooms after match officials had started to make inquiries.

Sobbing as she gave evidence before a British General Medical Council disciplinary hearing, Dr Chapman described the moment she realised she had been “duped”.

“I was horrified, just horrified. This is a very huge game and they cheated. I was very ashamed I gave into the pressure.”

She said she was so embarrassed about what she had done she felt she could not confide in anybody. “I was too ashamed. I was desperate to ask for some help, I was so ashamed of doing the wrong thing.”

Her counsel, Mary O’Rourke, asked: “Why did you cut him?” She replied: “I don’t understand. It sounds really feeble. I knew there was huge pressure but normally I would just walk out.”

On Monday, she also admitted she falsely stated at a subsequent European Rugby Cup hearing last July Williams’s injury was real and that she had not cut his lip. She said the hearing “spiralled into a complete nightmare” as the other parties involved in the case – the club, Williams, director of rugby Dean Richards and physiotherapist Steph Brennan – all stuck to the original story. “They were all saying that there was a real injury, that is all real blood,” she said. “I was just desperate. To be the one person to stand up and say ‘It was not’ . . . I did not know what to do. There was no justification, it was the wrong thing to do.”

She admitted almost all the charges against her from the GMC which says her conduct on the match day and at the subsequent ERC hearing was likely to bring the profession into disrepute and was dishonest. The only matter Dr Chapman contests is that she told match officials Williams had a loose tooth in order to deceive them.

The accident and emergency consultant was suspended on no pay from Maidstone Hospital following the incident and has since left her post. She cannot practise until the outcome of the scheduled two-week fitness-to-practise hearing in Manchester where she could be struck off.

The married mother-of-three was one of two match-day doctors, who considered herself part of the team. She said she had treated Williams in the past and was on friendly terms with him. She described the Leinster tie as “exciting and tense because it mattered hugely” and she postponed a holiday to work the game while her two sons acted as ballboys.

Williams was caught on camera leaving the pitch with blood apparently pouring out of his mouth but the doctor said he must have wiped it clean by the time she met up with him in the physio room.

She first realised something was wrong after she gave him a piece of gauze to put on his lower lip. “The fluid going on to the gauze was the wrong colour and the wrong texture for blood,” she said.

“I had never seen it before and I just did not know what was going on. I was still looking for an injury. In my naivety I could not understand why someone would come off with no injury at all.”

The pair moved to the changing-rooms as the doctor asked Williams to wash his mouth out so she could continue the examination. She said she was about to look into his mouth when Williams asked her to cut him. “He was absolutely desperate. He said ‘You have to cut me, I have got to have a real injury’. I was horrified. That means he has not got one (an injury) . . . that they cheated.”

She initially refused his requests and told him she “could not do it”. “He just kept on ‘You have to cut me’. I don’t remember the exact words but I remember the pressure,” she said. She then did so and the truth dawned on her, she said. “I realised I had been duped.”