IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN SIX NATIONS IN ONE BIG BUBBLE
AMID the recriminations, accusations, denials and damning of anyone suspected of being Patient Zero, the bursting of France’s all-too-insecure bubble raises obvious questions of Six Nations organisers.
Why were there no robust Covid contingency plans in place, just waiting to be rolled out in the event of a postponement?
Whose idea was it to allow players time at home — or back with their clubs — in the middle of a tournament always at risk of being wrecked by a cluster of cases?
And, to be blunt, what were they even thinking, pressing ahead with a ‘traditional’ Championship involving teams criss-crossing Europe for closed-doors matches?
Former France international Benjamin Kayser, now one of the most eloquent and erudite of commentators and pundits on the BBC platform, believes the organising committee should have taken drastic preventative action from the very start.
He told Sportsmail that, as soon as European club rugby was suspended because of French government opposition to travel, the Six Nations should have gone back to the drawing board.
Kayser would have preferred to see the entire tournament played in one stadium, condensed into five consecutive weekends of action — and with everyone involved kept in camp for the duration.
Similar to the NBA model that saw America’s biggest basketball stars locked into Walt Disney World, it would have been challenging. But it might just have offered better protection to players and staff. Enabling the competition to be played to a finish, at least.
‘There is always this question of whether they should have actually sacrificed the traditional Six Nations — and properly created a bubble,’ said Kayser. ‘Instead of five games over seven weeks, with bye weeks in the middle, play five games consecutively. ‘And create a bubble in Paris, Twickenham, wherever. Pick a Six Nations stadium. ‘Get all the teams there and get the games done as quickly as you can. ‘Because by travelling, by asking boys to stay in their rooms on their own for eight weeks… ‘It is a contact sport, you have to travel, you have to hire charter flights. But you still had to protect the sanity of the players. They’re still allowed to go out for a walk. Their children are still allowed to go to school, right?
‘And at some point they’re allowed to see their children during the eight or nine weeks.
‘So there was always a fear of, maybe not the Six Nations not going through, but it was always a matter of time before something was going to hit it.
‘I don’t think we were really worried about getting the tournament finished, before it kicked off.
‘But in France there was a lot of talk about what might happen, especially when the Champions Cup and Challenge Cup were suspended.
‘It was the first time the Sports Minister here came out and said they wouldn’t allow French teams to travel — or teams from the UK to come here.
‘That was the first time the politicians had intervened, because it was much bigger than just sport.
‘So obviously the government has been massively on the case of this France team since the start of the Six Nations.
‘They put some drastic measures into place, wanting to create a bubble.
‘But it’s one thing to have one or two cases on the Monday. It’s another thing to have three in the staff, five players initially, plus another five who can’t come. That’s a proper impact.’
In France, debate rages over how the virus was allowed to permeate the camp.
Head coach Fabien Galthie has publicly denied accusations that he regularly breached the ‘bubble’, while the Sports Minister has ordered the FFR to conduct an internal investigation.
The country’s own director of public health — their Professor Jason Leitch, if you like — has been appointed to oversee the inquiry.
Yet the squad’s own Covid manager, FFR vice-president Serge Simon, has suggested that they already know what happened, publicly identifying the team’s personal trainer as the source of the infection.
So, were Les Bleus to blame for an outbreak that left Galthie, two other coaches and 11 players in isolation, forcing the postponement of Sunday’s visit of Scotland?
The period immediately following their win over Ireland in Dublin on February 14 is certainly under the microscope.
Insisting that the players certainly couldn’t be faulted, Kayser (pictured) told Sportsmail: ‘Listen, I’m just repeating what’s been said in the French press.
‘There are a few question marks over the behaviour of one member of the staff.
‘At the moment, the players have been squeaky clean.
‘They concentrated at Marcoussis (the training camp) where nobody can come in. The press go once a week but they stay like 50 metres away, with all the other media stuff done on Zoom.
‘They fly on private planes, they get tested three or four times a week. This week it went to once a day, since last Saturday, because they wanted to eradicate this thing. ‘So the players’ attitude has been fantastic. The system has been put into place within reason, because they were still allowed to go home after three weeks and see their children — they had four days off.
‘But the cases occurred before the four days off, which is the main question mark around this. ‘What happened in Dublin? We know for a fact that they celebrated the win after the big Ireland game.
‘But they celebrated in their own hotel room, with just the players and the staff. That’s what they should be doing.
‘Was it when they walked around? Or the alleged problem could be one of the members of staff (has) not respected the bubble.
‘It’s doing my head in, to be honest. One day the game was off, then on, then off again…
‘It’s important to lead by example — and sport has a responsibility to put smiles on everybody’s face at a weekend. The weekends would be pretty dull without it.
‘But, at the same time, you can’t have a dozen or so positive cases in a contact sport without assessing it properly.
‘Hopefully we still have a chance of seeing the game played, whenever that might be.’