Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
WHATEVER IT TAKES!
Cueto says stars will accept ANY law changes in order to save the sport
MARK CUETO says radical law changes will be accepted if that is the price to start playing again and save rugby from going bust.
World Rugby are considering drastic amendments to enable a sport, whose very DNA is close contact, to survive during social distancing.
These are believed to include unopposed scrums, shortened rucks and mauls, and frequent stoppages for players to wash hands.
A week after the Government approved elite sport in England returning to training, rugby is undecided as to how safely to do that.
With the season cancelled for all but the Premiership and the top-flight gasping for financial oxygen after 10 weeks without income, Cueto reckons beggars cannot be choosers.
The former England wing turned commercial director at Sale believes whatever solution best minimises risk while enabling a resumption will get the players’ approval.
“In normal times any talk of changing formats or laws would be dismissed, but what we’re going through is frightening and without precedent,” he said.
“Whether you’ve had the virus or not, everybody now probably knows someone who has, or knows somebody who knows somebody who’s died from it.
“That changes everything and the old fashioned UK attitude of moaning about anything that isn’t ‘what we’re used to’, is almost out of the window now.
“So if that means games stopping every 10 minutes for everyone to hand sanitise and wash their faces in order to get rugby back on the pitch and on TV, so be it.”
Premier League football restarts small group, noncontact training today.
That route back is thought to have involved experts calculating for how long a player is within a ‘risk zone’ around others and working to reduce that number as much as possible.
Rugby players are in that risk zone a lot more. The challenge is to decide how many minutes per 80 is acceptable – and how to change the game to get under that number.
“If the players want the season to finish things will have to change,” said a source. “And they will have to be flexible.”
Many believe the £7million salary cap must be lowered to help clubs survive, yet billionaire Bristol owner Steve Lansdown (left) said, “now is not the time to take a step back and stifle progress”. He fears cutting the salary cap and scrapping the marquee player rule would mean stars quitting England.