Being awarded a walkover following the cancellation of their last 16 tie against Toulon, which was scheduled to take place at the RDS yesterday, is not how Leinster would have wanted it. Nor, most certainly, will the whole saga have gone down well in Toulon, where their sense of grievance is entirely understandable.
After one of their players, who was apparently in line to start the game, tested positive on Wednesday he was placed in isolation before the rest of the squad travelled to Dublin on Thursday. The entire playing and back-up staff underwent PCR testing again that evening and all recorded negative results.
However, the tournament's match day medical risk assessment committee "comprising medical leads from the unions, league bodies and both clubs, with input from the public health authorities in Ireland, as well as independent medical advice from Dr Brendan Payne (England) and Dr Daniel Koch (Switzerland) . . . concluded that there were a number of high-risk contacts with the player who had tested positive and deemed the match unsafe to play with the participation of those identified contacts."
The Toulon owner and president Bernard Lemaitre, who bought out previous owner Mourad Boudjellal last year, reacted swiftly and indignantly. "It's disgusting, the player tested positive on Wednesday and was immediately isolated. The EPCR was immediately informed, but let us go to Dublin. For more than 24 hours. And despite a total negative re-test of the players last night at 8pm, these people made this decision less than five hours before the match."
This is not the first time Toulon and EPCR have been at war with each other, as Toulon’s refusal to play the Scarlets in a round two game last December less than two hours before kick-off over fears of Covid safety led to that game being cancelled, with the Welsh side awarded a 28-0 vicotry.
The irony will not be lost on both parties. Toulon had been informed by EPCR, the competition organisers, that the game was safe to go ahead after a Scarlets player who had tested positive in the week had been withdrawn from training, along with those he had been in close contact with. Toulon disagreed and refused to comply.
At war
The club and EPCR have been at war since 2018 when Boudjellal was sentenced to a €75,000 for "inappropriate conduct". After Mathieu Bastareaud, then with Toulon, had been suspended for homophobic remarks against a player from Treviso, Boudjellal had defended Bastareaud, believing that the term "queer" did not constitute a homophobic insult, but a reflex insult.
Boudjellal took his case to the Court of Appeal in Aix en Provence, and won, having the EPCR and its director Rémi Gaillard condemned for “defamation”. Boudjellal maintained that not only were his remarks not homophobic, but that the EPCR could not condemn him for them.
There was also another ensuing dispute, the so-called “fake SMS”. The EPCR citation commissioner said he had received a rogue message supposedly from Boudjellal, who said it was a hoax.
But the cancellation of yesterday’s game at five hours notice, with the squad in Dublin and having completed their PCR tests without any positive results, has seen their relationship reach a nadir.
Given the more conservative or stricter protocols in Ireland compared to France, it seems entirely safe to presume that there would not have been uniform agreement at a meeting by video conference of the match day medical risk assessment committee to cancel the game. According to the tournament organisers, this committee comprised of “medical leads from the unions, league bodies and both clubs, with input from the public health authorities in Ireland” and others.
Conceivably of course, if the game had gone ahead and one or more of the Toulon players had been ‘incubating’, this could have led to an outbreak of Covid-19 within Leinster’s ranks.
Against that, according to a report in The Sunday Times four weeks ago, not a single case of on-the-field transmission of the Covid-19 virus has been confirmed in football, rugby union, rugby league or American football during a full year of the pandemic.
Dr Simon Kemp, head of sports medicine at the Rugby Football Union, said: "There isn't a single definite known case in rugby. All sports think the risk of outdoor transmission is low and when you look at club transmission the risk here is among the off-field mixing."
In any event, the cancellation of such a marquee game, between four-time and three-time winners, constituted an anti-climactic and unfortunate start to this weekend’s unique last 16 round.
Added to the four games cancelled on the second week, and the abandonment of the pool stages before rounds three and four, it means the results of five matches have now been determined off the pitch.
