Leinster to appeal Montpellier Champions Cup decision
Pic: Ryan Byrne
Leinster are refusing to take the cancellation of their Champions Cup match against Montepellier lying down with the province poised to appeal the EPCR’s decision to award the French side a 28-0 win and all five match points.
Leo Cullen’s side were hit by a handful of positive Covid cases last Friday week, the day before they opened their Heineken Champions Cup campaign at home to Bath, and further cases cropped up during the course of the current week.
However, the province was still in a position to name a strong 23-man squad for the trip to France, including 16 internationals. The squad was named on Thursday morning and due to fly out Friday but instead, the game was called off by the EPCR’s medical advisors.
Private anger at this decision was expressed as ‘disappointment’ in a subsequent club statement but that is putting it mildly with Leinster confounded by the fact that EPCR then postponed five Anglo-French fixtures for the weekend due to travel restrictions rather than cancel them too.
The club will now look to make an argument that they should now be added to the list of games to be refixed rather than scrapped, not least given the fact that they did everything asked of them by the organisers in the run-up to the tie.
European club rugby chiefs have been left scrambling to save this season’s competitions after seven fixtures were postponed due to the French government’s decision to effectively close its borders with the UK. Five matches in the Champions Cup and another two in the Challenge Cup were on Friday called off, plunging the tournaments into chaos.
The postponements came on the same day Premiership Rugby announced 54 positive Covid-19 cases across nine clubs – the highest total since records began – raising the prospect of further disruption to the festive fixture list.
The seven European matches were cancelled due to French government policy rather than outbreaks but in total 10 of the 18 matches have been called off this week. After crisis talks on Friday the organisers of the two European competitions, EPCR, announced that “there were insufficient assurances that these matches would not be at risk”. The French clubs were concerned that any positive cases recorded in the UK would require 10 days of isolation while the British clubs could not fulfil the strict new criteria for entering France and needed elite sport exemption.
As a result, in the second round of the Champions Cup, Bath v La Rochelle, Sale Sharks v Clermont Auvergne, Scarlets v Bordeaux, Toulouse v Wasps and Stade Francais v Bristol Bears were all postponed. Munster's game against Castres at Thomond Park goes ahead however.
Organisers have insisted that the intention is to fulfil the fixtures at a later date but that creates a monumental headache over scheduling with no obvious space in the calendar and leaves them open to accusations of double standards, not least by Leinster.
The straightforward solution is to make the two-legged round of last 16 into 80-minute ties to free up a weekend but that is based on the assumption rounds three and four of the pool stage go ahead, which looks far from certain. Further disruption in January would throw both competitions into jeopardy while if matches are not rescheduled the clubs will be left counting the cost.
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