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Final round of the Gallagher Premiership hit by a second match cancellation
By Liam Heagney
The final day of the Gallagher Premiership regular season has been left reeling by a second match cancellation, the fixture between league leaders Bristol and Heineken Cup-chasing London Irish getting called off by league officials early on Saturday morning.
The call-off follows Tuesday's announcement that the match between bottom club Worcester and European qualification hopefuls Gloucester would also not go ahead. That cancellation scuppered Gloucester's qualification hopes.
In total, ten matches over the course of the season have now been cancelled and a panel will meet to decide the points share of this latest round 22 cancellation.
With London Irish the club where the virus breakout was reported to have happened, they will likely receive two points with four going to Bristol. That would guarantee Bristol a first-place finish ahead of next week's semi-finals while the two points for Irish would allow them into the top eight ahead of Saturday's game involving European qualification rivals Bath.
A Premiership Rugby statement read: "London Irish returned positive Covid-19 tests this week and a significant number of their playing squad were ruled out of the match through the contact tracing process. This meant London Irish were unable to fulfil the fixture at Ashton Gate, something that was only confirmed this morning.
"Our priority is the health and safety of everyone involved with London Irish and Bristol Bears and we will give the clubs any support they need. We wish everyone affected a full and speedy recovery. Neither Premiership Rugby nor the club will be naming any of the players or staff involved and we'd ask everyone to respect their privacy.
"Under the Premiership Rugby regulations, the match between London Irish and Bristol Bears will be cancelled. A Premiership Rugby panel will now be convened to determine the allocation of points and a further announcement will be made in due course."
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Latest Comments
Nah, that just needs some more variation. Chip kicks, grubber stabs, all those. Will Jordan showed a pretty good reason why the rush was bad for his link up with BB.
If you have an overlap on a rush defense, they naturally cover out and out and leave a huge gap near the ruck.
It also helps if both teams play the same rules. ARs set the offside line 1m past where the last mans feet were😅
Go to commentsYeah nar, should work for sure. I was just asking why would you do it that way?
It could be achieved by outsourcing all your IP and players to New Zealand, Japan, and America, with a big Super competition between those countries raking it in with all of Australia's best talent to help them at a club level. When there is enough of a following and players coming through internally, and from other international countries (starting out like Australia/without a pro scene), for these high profile clubs to compete without a heavy australian base, then RA could use all the money they'd saved over the decades to turn things around at home and fund 4 super sides of their own that would be good enough to compete.
That sounds like a great model to reset the game in Aus. Take a couple of decades to invest in youth and community networks before trying to become professional again. I just suggest most aussies would be a bit more optimistic they can make it work without the two decades without any pro club rugby bit.
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