Rugby, but not as we know it.
Over the weekend, Leinster and Ireland star announced that he would be retiring at the end of the 2019/20 season. Whenever that end is, exactly, is still up in the air and it won’t be touching down for a while yet.
“They say the best time to leave a party is when you’re still having fun,” McFadden told the Leinster Rugby website, “so the time has come for me to announce my retirement from the end of the season.”
Friday’s announcement of a proposed five-step road-map to recovery, as Ireland gets a handle on the Covid-19 pandemic, would have brought hope to many sports fans that some kind of a return was possible in the coming months.
From June 8, for instance, rugby players would be permitted to train in small groups as long as they were practising social distancing. Due to the close-contact nature of rugby, that sport (along with wrestling and boxing) was down for a later return to competitive action than GAA and football. Rugby is ear-marked to get going again during Phase 5 on August 10.
It is likely, though, that closed door games will be the way forward for the short to medium term. Do not expect to see packed out stadiums in Ireland, at sporting events, for the rest of 2020.
Dr Cillian De Gascun of the National Public Health Emergency Team told The Irish Times, on Saturday, that he did not envisage Ireland hosting their November internationals (against Australia, Japan and South Africa) but he did strike a more optimistic note on the 2021 Guinness Six Nations.
Just as we were all absorbing that, World Rugby gave unions sight of their recommended guidelines, put together by former Ireland and Lions doctor Éanna Falvey, Prav Mathema (Wales’ National Medical Manager), Mary Horgan and World Rugby chief medical officer Michael Raftery. In brief summary, those guidelines include:
- Players wearing gloves and masks during training
- Daily temperature checks and players being sent home if their temperature is over 37.5(c) degrees
- Daily questionnaires on health and wellbeing for players and staff
- Refraining from physical contact during sessions (essentially ruling out rucking, mauling, scrummaging and full contact runs)
- Deep cleans of training facilities after each daily training session
- Matches played behind closed doors for the foreseeable future
The guidelines, which will form the frame-work for various unions across the world (along with the advice of each individual country’s government and health experts), state it would be prudent to have closed door matches until a vaccine can be found and widely distributed. Work on a Covid-19 vaccine has been underway since January but it could be between 12 to 18 months before such a vaccine is widely available.
The UK are set to announce a road-map for a return to work and easing of certain restrictions on movement by the end of this week so there may be clarity for the English, Welsh and Scottish unions, as well as those involved with Ulster Rugby.
The Guinness PRO14 and Champions Cup still need to wrap their 2019/20 seasons up, as do several other rugby competitions such as the Premiership and the Guinness Six Nations. As much as this season has been impacted, the 2020/21 season could be even harder hit.
One possibility being explored by the IRFU, among an ever-lengthening list, is holding inter-provincial games at an empty Aviva Stadium in the autumn. This would get the players back to action, would be televised and it could revive an inter-pro competition that ceased when the Celtic League (now PRO14) was introduced.
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Springboks legend and former Munster star Jean De Villiers joins Barry and Andrew on House of Rugby from South Africa. Leinster lock Ryan Baird on his breakthrough season and learning from Scott Fardy & James Ryan.
