Mourad Boudjellal, the president of Toulon, has suggested the postponed European Rugby Champions Cup game against Bath could take place during the Six Nations.
All Champions Cup and Challenge Cup matches that were due to be played in France over the weekend were postponed following the Paris attacks.
The knockout stages of the Champions Cup are not set to take place until early April while the Six Nations kicks off on Feb 6.
Boudjellal has concede that any rearrangement will prove complicated, highlighting the difficulty in potentially releasing international players to play for their clubs.
"Playing on Wednesday isn't possible," he told French sports daily L'Equipe.
"I can only see one solution... It would mean that the (national team) coaches would have to accept not being able to call up international players of Bath or Toulon in order for us to be able to play the match during a matchday of the Six Nations."
In an exclusive interview with Telegraph Sport, Bruce Craig, the chairman of Bath, believes the match will never be played.
Craig, who is on the European Professional Club Rugby board, believes that finding a slot for Bath's game will prove impossible because of the congestion to the English calendar caused by the Rugby World Cup and England's tour to Australia next summer.
"It is very clear to me that the Toulon match can't happen," said Craig, who is based in Aix-en-Provence. "The midweek option is not an option to my mind as that would be to the detriment of player welfare as well as the integrity of two competitions, an important Champions Cup game being squeezed in with all the attendant travel issues between two Premiership weekends.
Some Bath fans made the trip to Toulon before it was abandoned
"There is no way we should be letting that happen. You can't play three high-profile games in a week. In the wider context of what has happened in Paris, this is not a serious matter, of course it isn't. And I do understand why the decision was taken. But from a rugby point of view, and from the point of view of the competition, this is an issue of significant consequence. There is no place to fit it in. It is a bit of a disaster in that regard."
Should the match be rescheduled for the Six Nations period, it is highly unlikely the coaches of England or France would agree to release players, especially whomever becomes Stuart Lancaster's replacement.
Toulon, for all their wealth and success, have very few France internationals of note, save for Mathieu Bastareaud, Maxime Mermoz and Sébastien Tillous-Borde, and their absence would not harm Les Bleus too badly. Bath, on the other hand, possess Anthony Watson, Jonathan Joseph, Kyle Eastmond, George Ford, Semesa Rokoduguni, Dave Attwood and David Wilson.
No comments:
Post a Comment