Premiership rugby side London Welsh, which was promoted to the league last season in controversial circumstances, could see its "supremely courageous bid to retain top-flight status scuppered by a red-tape wrangle" involving the scrum-half Tyson Keats and the former Team Manager Mike Scott, according to Chris Hewett of the London INDEPENDENT. The Exiles "will appear before a Rugby Football Union competitions tribunal next week and if, as expected, they have league points deducted, they will find themselves up to their eyeballs in the relegation mire." Keats, a New Zealander, is said "to have played nine games without proper registration," and even though he has now been re-registered correctly, the panel, including the Premier Rugby CEO Mark McCafferty, is "likely to take a dim view of the affair." London Welsh CEO Tony Copsey said Monday night that "the club itself alerted the governing body to the issue after an internal investigation." He said it was "a serious matter", and that he and his colleagues were cooperating fully. He also stressed that Keats "was in no way to blame" (INDEPENDENT, 2/26).
