Bouscatel blasts IRB and Six Nations organisers

Toulouse president Rene Bouscatel has waded into the row over the re-scheduled Six Nations game between France and Ireland with a withering attack on rugby union’s organising bodies, the IRB and the Six Nations organising committee.

The re-scheduled match is fixed for Sunday, March 4, but this conflicts with a round of Top 14 action due to be played on the Friday and Saturday, making it the 11th time this season an international match has clashed with a Top 14 weekend. Instead the French clubs, led by Ligue National de Rugby president Pierre Yves Revol, wanted the game moved to the end of the season but this was rejected by the Six Nations organising committee, leaving Bouscatel fuming with the decision.

“The way these international bodies function, it’s a bit surreal,” said Bouscatel. “They respect nothing, they just impose.

“They believe it’s the middle ages, and they have the perks of a prince.”

With Clermont Auvergne meeting Toulouse on the same weekend as the rescheduled match, one of France’s biggest club matches of the season will be impacted badly as around 10 of Philippe Saint-André’s France squad will miss the game.

LNR president Revol claimed that their competition was being devalued due to the mistakes of others. He blasted: “We regret our competition, the Top 14, is the one that must adjust to the organisation of international competitions even though the problems are ones they have created.

He added: “The proof is there that you’d be able to play four matches consecutively and shorten the Six Nations from seven weeks to six weeks.”

Meanwhile, the French Rugby Supporters Club has attacked French Federation president Pierre Camou for his attempts to blame match referee Dave Pearson for last weekend’s disastrous last minute postponement.

“The referee wasn’t responsible and the tears of the Federation aren’t going to fool us,” Supporters Club president Daniel Coumeigt told Sudouest.

He said: “You don’t have to be a professional gardener to know that if a pitch is frozen 20 centimetres deep, the two inches thawed will soon freeze again when it’s -6.”