It’s only fair for match to go ahead in Paris as scheduled

SCOTLAND are entirely in the right. There is absolutely no good reason to postpone Sunday’s Six Nations fixture against France in Paris.

The fact that the French reported no new positives following Monday’s round of Covid testing clinches the argument. Les Bleus may well be missing nine of the matchday 23 who triumphed over Ireland in Dublin last time out. But, please, let’s stop all the nonsense about how ‘impossible’ the situation is for Fabien Galthie and his team. This is sport in the age of the pandemic. Difficult and more random, certainly. But hardly unplayable. There are a few coaches in football, in particular, who will find the idea of a date switch laughable.

David Holoubek, the Czech Republic Under-18s coach forced to pull together a shadow senior squad to face Scotland in last year’s Nations League encounter, might find it all grimly amusing. The same goes for everyone at St Mirren, who were bluntly told to stick an outfield player in goal — they signed an emergency goalkeeper in the end — in order to fulfil Premiership fixtures earlier this season.

All over the world, in all manner of sports, teams have been denied the services of players due to Covid protocols. Either because of positive tests, weaknesses in their own systems, daft individual decisions — or even just players being identified as a ‘close contact’ of a teammate while on international duty, coaches have been forced to improvise. But France, with over ten times as many registered rugby players as Scotland, are to be treated as a special case? Given another week to get all of their most important performers cleared to continue their Grand Slam pursuit, even if that means Gregor Townsend being stripped of star players — recalled by clubs, under the letter of the law — for the rearranged fixture? That would be ridiculous. Utterly out of step with the ‘rugby values’ supposedly still underpinning the modern game. What happens next, of course, remains a worry. Because there’s no doubt that even a weakened France could give our boys a torrid time.

And, sport being sport, many Scotland fans will even fear that defeat became inevitable the moment Scottish Rugby spoke out against a postponement. We all remember what happened the last time they kicked up a fuss about a game going ahead as scheduled.

Sunday may end up being just such a dispiriting experience. But let’s at least find out, right? Any decision that forced Scotland to send a weakened team to Paris, the likely result of a postponement, could not be considered fair play. lDEJA BLUES FOR SCOTS — 76-77