McKay lays out plans for return to action
WTA chief feels merger with ATP could work
THE SRU remains committed to playing the Six Nations Championship to a finish if at all possible, with dates in late autumn being seriously considered, according to Dominic McKay, the governing body’s chief operating officer.
McKay, who represented rugby at a Covid-19 summit meeting on Tuesday with sports minister Joe FitzPatrick and leading figures from other sports, admitted that such a timetable might only be a fallback measure, to be taken if the scheduled Autumn Tests were unable to take place.
But he also insisted that the plan was still to bring the current PRO14 season to some sort of conclusion, and suggested that some sort of game involving Scotland’s professional players could mark a return to rugby here.
“Of course we’re looking at ways to reschedule those Six Nations games and do that later in the year if that’s at all possible, around October/ November time,” McKay said. “But it’s not an easy solve, of course, because we have two rounds of the Six Nations” – although only one in Scotland’s case – “and we’ve also got some other Under-20 games to be managed as well.
“Until such time as we’re told otherwise, we expect to have New Zealand, Argentina and Japan [at Murrayfield] in November. But it would be wrong of us not to give consideration to other options, and that’s what we’re doing just now. It’s all talk as it often is in rugby, but as yet we’re not near any firm solutions.
“About the PRO14, we’re still looking at scenarios which might find some way of potentially finishing the season if restrictions allow, later in the back end of the summer, beginning of autumn. That would definitely be a curtailed end to the PRO14 season. We’re still looking at scenarios and expecting that the PRO14 will come back to us with a paper looking at what might be possible. But that’s entirely dependent on the various restrictions in the respective territories.”
Glasgow Warriors and Edinburgh are both in the play-off positions as things stand. Outgoing Glasgow coach Dave Rennie suggested last week that Leinster, who have won all their games, deserved to be crowned champions, but that is very much a personal view rather than one to which the SRU subscribes.
Turning to a description of how professional rugby might return, McKay detailed the steps he believed the Glasgow and Edinburgh players would have to take. “What we’d want to do when it’s right and appropriate is: get individual players training at home; then individual players training at
BT Murrayfield; then a big group of players training at BT Murrayfield; and then in due course those players being able to play and to train in a contact environment.
“The next level up then is potentially playing a game against each other. And that could be some way off. From a rugby perspective, it’s entirely possible that it could take eight to ten weeks before our players are back up to the physical condition they would expect to be in before they could play a competitive match.”
Asked if “playing a game against each other” meant an Edinburgh v Glasgow match was the most likely way in which live rugby would return, McKay insisted it was impossible to be specific at this stage. “It’s probably too soon to be talking about ‘likely’ anything in the current environment.
“The priority is around working with the government and trying to do what is as appropriate as possible. At the moment, we’re not looking too far ahead, we’re looking at when can we get our players training? When can we give advice to local rugby clubs about it being safe for them to resume training?
“So I guess domestically every organisation and every governing body is working with their government to do what is appropriate to them. No one can look too far into the future at the moment, so we’re focussing on the steps we can see, and for us that is about getting our elite players when appropriate back training.”
WTA chief Steve Simon supports the concept of a merger with the men’s ATP Tour but warned financial disparity would at least initially be a consequence.
Both the WTA and ATP Tours were suspended in March because of the coronavirus pandemic and will not resume until mid-July at the earliest.
Roger Federer ignited calls for the two ruling bodies “to be united and come together as one” in a tweet last month, an idea which has been publicly welcomed by Simon and ATP Tour chairman Andrea Gaudenzi.
But WTA chairman and chief executive Simon told the Daily Telegraph: “You certainly can’t go in with those expectations that [financial equality] is immediately there. I think it’s a long-term goal.
“But I think that, by coming together, we are presenting the sport in a way that our fans and our partners and the marketplace will embrace.
“Also, if we were able to get to that stage [of a single merged body], you’d still have a men’s calendar, you’d still have a women’s calendar, you’d still have combined events.
“Not every facility can accommodate a combined field. But over time, if you’re one organisation, you have a lot better chance to resolve.”