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'Clearly disappointed': Scotland's Test in Romania is cancelled

By PA
(Photo by PA)

Scotland have been forced to call off their Test match against Romania later this month due to several positive Covid-19 tests being returned in the camp. The match was due to be played in Bucharest on July 10 but has now been cancelled. All players and staff are now isolating, a statement from Scottish Rugby said.

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The union’s chief executive Mark Dodson said it had every intention of fulfilling the fixture against Georgia on July 17. Those players and staff who have not tested positive will embark on a graduated return to training once their isolation period ends. The problem first arose in the lead-up to last week’s cancelled A team match versus England A Leicester.

Dodson said: “Player welfare is paramount in every decision that we make as an organisation, and unfortunately we’ve run out of time to allow our players to recover and train properly for the Romania fixture.

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“We are clearly disappointed and I feel massively for both our group of players and management, as well the Romanian Rugby Federation. However, our squad’s health and well-being must come first.

“We still have every intention of travelling to face Georgia the following week, subject to further medical review and testing, and we will hopefully be in a position where a large section of the squad will be able to return to a graduated training regime next week.”

Interim Scotland head coach Mike Blair added: “As a camp, of both management and players, we are obviously massively disappointed that we will be unable to travel and face Romania next weekend. However, it is 100 per cent the correct decision, taking into account the health and well-being of this group.

“It’s clearly been a disappointing couple of days. However, since meeting as a squad over a fortnight ago, the determination and resilience shown by this group has been evident to see, and we’ll move forward with that Georgia fixture very much in focus.”

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JW 1 hour ago
How the four-team format will help the Wallabies defeat the Lions

Have to imagine it was a one off sorta thing were they were there (saying playing against the best private schools) because that is the level they could play at. I think I got carried away and misintrepted what you were saying, or maybe it was just that I thought it was something that should be brought in.


Of course now school is seen as so much more important, and sports as much more important to schooling, that those rural/public gets get these scholarships/free entry to play at private schools.


This might only be relevant in the tradition private rugby schools, so not worth implementing, but the same drain has been seen in NZ to the point where the public schools are not just impacted by the lost of their best talent to private schools, there is a whole flow on effect of losing players to other sports their school can' still compete at the highest levels in, and staff quality etc. So now and of that traditional sort of rivalry is near lost as I understand it.


The idea to force the top level competition into having equal public school participation would be someway to 'force' that neglect into reverse. The problem with such a simple idea is of course that if good rugby talent decides to stay put in order to get easier exposure, they suffer academically on principle. I wonder if a kid who say got selected for a school rep 1st/2nd team before being scouted by a private school, or even just say had two or three years there, could choose to rep their old school for some of their rugby still?


Like say a new Cup style comp throughout the season, kid's playing for the private school in their own local/private school grade comp or whatever, but when its Cup games they switch back? Better represent, areas, get more 2nd players switching back for top level 1st comp at their old school etc? Just even in order to have cool stories where Ella or Barrett brothers all switch back to show their old school is actually the best of the best?

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