Strict new protocols provoke reaction

Less than a month to the end of the season, and less than two months to the hoped-for crowning of the next champion of France, the LNR has imposed strict new health protocols on the 30 clubs in the Top 14 and Pro D2.

- JAMES HARRINGTON

The goal and the message is clear on the first weekend a full programme of games in the French top flight has been possible in a month: this season’s competitions must end as scheduled – with play-offs and champions, promotion and relegation.

It’s especially tough on European finalists La Rochelle and Montpellier, who have catch-up games to squeeze in before the end of the regular season. Montpellier in particular – with Top 14 survival still not assured – face two runs of three games in nine days in the weeks ahead. Both sides, who faced one another yesterday at the GGL, play again on Tuesday.

From tomorrow, players and staff must take PCR tests three times a week – rather than twice as is currently the case – between now and June 5, later for those clubs that make the post-season play-offs; while already existing recommendations – including wearing masks at all times when they are not playing or training, a ban on post-match or training showers, and no group celebration of tries during matches – have been reiterated loud and clear in a 15-page document sent to clubs.

Players and coaches understand the need for health measures but for some, the reinforcing of the rules is a bitter and slightly confusing pill.

Former Toulouse and La Rochelle player Gregory Lamboley tweeted: “Who lays these rules on us? Ban congratulating each other while they run into each other for 80 minutes. It’s crazy.”

Bordeaux’s strongman manager Christophe Urios said the new protocols had prompted an outcry from the clubs, ‘in particular from the doctors’. It has emerged that 50 medical staff wrote to the LNR in protest at the enhanced health measures.