France's Six Nations match with Scotland postponed after Covid-19 outbreak
The Six Nations has been plunged into disarray after France’s match against Scotland was postponed on Thursday with tournament organisers facing a sizable headache over rescheduling and the possibility of another lengthy wait to finish the championship.
Just 24 hours after organisers had given the cautious green light for the match to go ahead following a second round of negative Covid-19 tests in the France squad, it was postponed when another player – believed to be Uini Atonio – tested positive. No new date for the match has been set and it is understood next week’s fallow weekend is unlikely due to concerns over whether the outbreak will have been contained by then.
France’s entire squad were put into isolation on Thursday and having had a full training session the day before, there is the possibility of more cases arising in the coming days. It is therefore unclear how many players will have to stay in isolation, or for how long. Furthermore, unless a swift agreement is forthcoming, Scotland do not have access to at least 10 of their players based in England and France on fallow weekends
After the match was postponed, their head coach, Gregor Townsend, said: “We will wait to see what options are available to play. But it remains our position that we want all our eligible players available so we can compete to the level we would have this weekend.” The next official international window is not until July, however, when France are due to tour Australia. Scotland could also have a number of players away with the British & Irish Lions, assuming that tour goes ahead in some form. Another solution proposed is to shoehorn in a midweek fixture, most likely for the week beginning 8 March. That would raise questions over player welfare with the final two rounds taking place on the subsequent weekends.
An alternative would be to find a weekend soon after the championship is due to finish but that does not solve the problem of player release, in fact it would only aggravate it because France would also struggle to obtain access to their players outside a Test window. With no obvious solution, and with France having won their first two matches, there is the genuine possibility that the winner of the tournament is not determined until significantly after what was scheduled be the final round of fixtures on 20 March.
All the while debate continues to rage in France over the source of the initial outbreak last week, which has struck down 12 players as well as the head coach, Fabien Galthié, and three members of his staff. The French sports minister, Roxana Maracineanu, has demanded an investigation by the French federation president, Bernard Laporte, after previously saying LesBleus could only take part in the tournament if she was given guarantees over strict Covid-19 protocols.
The prime minister, Jean Castex, was asked about possible sanctions for the French federation on Thursday and said: “Before talking about sanctions, we still need to know exactly what happened. I think that the players are already themselves sanctioned for not being able to play.”