Confusion reigns but union failures have been laid bare
Government, Six Nations organisers and governing bodies show lack of leadership
IT is impossible at this stage to identify where precisely the buck stops for the farcical situation of Scotland’s Six Nations clash against Wales in Cardiff – which was scheduled to be played at 2.15pm at the Principality Stadium this afternoon – being called off just 24 hours before kick-off.
What we can say for certain is that there has been an abject failure in leadership from central government, down through the Six Nations tournament organisers, to the two competing teams’ governing bodies (the Welsh Rugby Union and the Scottish Rugby Union).
Wales may have been the host nation, but in this instance the Scots would have been perfectly within their rights to make a unilateral decision on behalf of their players and supporters to step back from the fixture until we all have a better grip of the full implications of the Covid-19 outbreak and how the situation should be managed.
Serious debate was no doubt going on behind the scenes for days leading up to the decision, but the fact that the WRU issued a statement at 9.31am yesterday morning insisting that the game would still go ahead as planned despite the growing anxiety about the spread of Covid-19 is a damning indictment of the lack of foresight and consideration to some of the sport’s most loyal supporters.
The days of coaches full of players and fans leaving almost every rugby clubhouse in Scotland on the Thursday afternoon or at the crack of dawn on the Friday morning before the Wales versus Scotland match may be long gone, but the bi-annual pilgrimage to the valleys is still a huge pull for a significant number of good rugby people in both countries, meaning that by the time the postponement was announced the valleys were already chock-a-block with kilts.
Clubs such as Grangemouth Stags and Hawick Harlequins were playing matches against their long-standing Welsh friends at the very moment that the cancellation was revealed. For the record, the Stags defeated Llandybie 39-41 to claim the Alban Jenkins Shield in the
63rd year of the two clubs’ association; while ‘The Mighty Quins’ lost 25-5 to Bargoed in their 54th meeting.
None of the Scots in the Welsh capital will believe that their weekend has been wasted after a couple of days catching up with old acquaintances and/or drinking the famous (some might say infamous) watering holes of St Mary Street in Cardiff dry, but we really don’t know how serious the wider public health implications are.
It appears that the right decision was only belatedly made when those in charge realised just how bad the optics were of being the only major sporting event going ahead this weekend.
Quite why they were so desperate to get the game played, especially after the other Super Saturday matches had been postponed more than a week earlier, is difficult to fathom. Surely the need for an immediate cashflow injection from having 70,000 fans descending on Cardiff city centre was not that pressing?
The Scotland team were apparently on their way to the Principality Stadium for the customary eve of match captain’s run yesterday afternoon when they heard that the game had been called off, and apparently left Cardiff almost immediately to return home by coach.
There will no doubt be significant frustration within the squad that after a week of preparation they did not get a chance to go after a third consecutive win in a single championship for the first time since 1996 – especially as any sort of victory would have put them in the unfamiliar position of tabletoppers for the foreseeable future (at least until the other postponed fixtures were played).
After a frustrating start to this year’s competition, with losses to Ireland and England, they had built up
a decent head of steam with wins against Italy and France, meaning they travelled down to Wales with justified confidence of picking up a first win since 2002 – and the prospect of taking on Wales from a standing start later in the year will not be a particularly attractive option.
The Scots are notorious slow starters when it comes to tournaments and Test series, as we remember from 2018 when they were hammered 34-7 at the Principality Stadium in Gregor Townsend’s first Six Nations match as head coach.
It is not clear at this stage when the four outstanding Six Nations games will now get played.
The professional rugby calendar is already a devilishly complicated jigsaw, but it has been reported that late October – as a lead-in to the November Test window – is the most likely scenario. However, until we have a better grip of how the Covid-19 global pandemic is going to develop it really is futile to speculate.