Posted on Sep 19, 2020 at 5:48 PMUpdated Sep 19, 2020, 7:00 PM
Castres is eliminated from the European Challenge after being forced on Saturday to forfeit its quarter-final against the English Leicester, scheduled for Sunday, due to four cases of Covid-19 in its workforce and staff.
The French club confirmed that four people, three players and a member of the management team, tested positive for Covid-19 before the team left for England. However, the limit for the match to take place is three, explained the EPCR, the organizer of European rugby competitions (EPCR), who asked Castres to withdraw.
In a press release, the CO denounced the “unworthy amateurism” of the EPCR and “is surprised at the decision”.
“No precise rule, including on a maximum number of cases, appears in the EPCR regulations, which seems to be an amateurism unworthy of a European competition. The exclusion of the OC, even before the results of the new tests are not known, leaves players, staff and the public in the misunderstanding and frustrated not being able to defend their chances in this long-awaited quarter-final, “lamented the Tarn club.
Leicester joined in the last four Bristol and Bordeaux-Bègles, qualified on the ground. Toulon and the Scarlets are fighting over the last ticket on Saturday night.
This elimination by package is a first for professional rugby, undermined by the Covid-19 pandemic which resulted in the interruption of competitions for nearly six months in the northern hemisphere.
If the southern hemisphere has resumed earlier, it is in the form of national competitions in Australia and New Zealand, Super Rugby in its cross-border version having no prospect of recovery.
In Europe, the EPCR has changed the format of the 2020-2021 edition of its competitions (European Cup and Challenge) in order to be able to set the final phase of the 2019-2020 season at the start of autumn.
The very dense schedule making any postponement very complicated or even impossible, the EPCR has therefore opted for a forfeit, imitating the English championship which declared the match lost on the green carpet (20-0) if a team finds itself in the impossibility to play.
The Top 14, however, has not yet recorded such a sentence. The Stade Français, of which about twenty members (players and supervisors) contracted the coronavirus during the preparation in August, has already been able to benefit from a postponement of its first match against Bordeaux-Bègles.
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