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Leicester game cancelled just hours after naming XV for Bordeaux

(Photo by Mike Egerton/PA Images via Getty Images)

Leicester have finished out their Heineken Champions Cup pool a day earlier than planned as it was decided that virus-hit Bordeaux would be unable to travel from France for Saturday’s match in England.  This development resulted in the Tigers being awarded a 28-0 win and five match points to leave them sitting at the top of Pool B with 19 points, four ahead of Gallagher Premiership champions Harlequins who host Castres on Friday night. 

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The Leicester match at Mattioli Woods Welford Road didn’t appear to be under threat as Steve Borthwick announced his matchday 23 at the appointed time on Friday lunchtime and the visiting Bordeaux did likewise.

The rejuvenated Leicester had George Ford chosen to skipper an XV featuring England picks Ben Youngs, Freddie Steward, Joe Heyes and the uncapped Ollie Chessum with Ellis Genge named on the bench. 

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However, the plug was pulled on the match just a few hours later. A statement read: “EPCR has been informed by Bordeaux that they have recorded a number of positive test results for Covid-19 among their tournament squad and, as a consequence, the club is not in a position to fulfil its Champions Cup round four fixture against Leicester.#

“The Pool B fixture at Welford Road is therefore regrettably cancelled with Leicester Tigers awarded the match on a 28-0, five-match points basis, in accordance with the tournament rules.”

 

With the committee room outcome a decision that won’t prevent Bordeaux from qualifying for the round of 16 section of the Champions Cup, the French club appears to have accepted the ruling in good faith and has published the EPCR media statement on its website. 

This is in contrast to the furious reaction from defending champions Toulouse when it emerged that their home match versus Cardiff was cancelled and the award of a 28-0 win and five-match points to the Welsh region left the French club fearing their might not qualify from their pool.       

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J
JW 5 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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