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Stade's Gael Fickou to join Racing early but that isn't the reason for this weekend's Parisian derby postponement
By Sam Smith
Racing 92 will reportedly welcome Gael Fickou into their ranks earlier than his planned end of season move from Stade Francais but he will have to wait until next week to link up with his new teammates as a virus outbreak has closed the club's training ground and resulted in the postponement of this weekend's Parisian derby.
Fickou's new club were due to host his old club this Saturday at the La Defense Arena but that game has now been shelved until the weekend of May 1, by which stage the France midfielder will have made his cross-city switch.
The centre wasn't due to change clubs until the summer months ahead of the 2021/22 Top 14 season. However, with Racing struggling minus the injured Virimi Vakatawa and Henry Chavency, RMC Sport have reported that Fickou will join up with new teammates next week to alleviate their current lack of midfield resources.
In the meantime, the Racing squad are in isolation and facing a series of Covid tests before they can resume training following their Heineken Champions Cup quarter-final loss to Bordeaux. Top 14 officials have reported that two frontline players belonging to Bordeaux tested positive for the English variant of Covid-19 in the days after the game. Bordeaux's game at Agen was postponed on Wednesday.
A statement read: "Two frontline players from Bordeaux (one of whom is slightly symptomatic) tested positive for the English variant of Covid-19 in the days following the Champions Cup match.
"Given the high risk of occurrence of contamination within the Racing workforce and the contamination times analysed by the league's medical expertise commission in this case, the commission decided to isolate the Racing workforce from Thursday until Monday with tests organised for Saturday and Monday.
"Taking into account the measures announced by the medical expertise commission, the competitions committee has decided to postpone the Racing versus Stade match until the weekend of May 1. As a result of this postponement, the La Rochelle-Lyon match initially scheduled for Saturday at 5:45pm (French time) is rescheduled for 9:05pm."
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500k registered players in SA are scoolgoers and 90% of them don't go on to senior club rugby. SA is fed by having hundreds upon hundreds of schools that play rugby - school rugby is an institution of note in SA - but as I say for the vast majority when they leave school that's it.
Go to commentsDon't think you've watched enough. I'll take him over anything I's seen so far. But let's see how the future pans out. I'm quietly confident we have a row of 10's lined uo who would each start in many really good teams.
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