Declared a 28-0 loser by the EPCR on Friday due to around ten Covid-19 contaminations, Stade Toulousain nevertheless had a sufficient number of players. On Sunday, the club qualified thanks to the results of other competing teams.
Stade Toulousain, defending champions, qualified for the knockout stages of the European Cup on Sunday despite their defeat on the green carpet due to Covid-19, benefiting from other results which were favorable to them. The Toulousains are 7th in Pool B, ahead of Stade Français (same number of points), and can no longer be dislodged from the first eight places, synonymous with qualification.
On Saturday, all French rugby had shouted at the “unfair decision” and criticized a European Cup “distorted and discredited”. René Bouscatel, the president of the National Rugby League (LNR), was furious the day after the cancellation of the Toulouse match against Cardiff. Friday, the EPCR, the organizing body of the competition, had given the match lost 28-0 to the Stade Toulousain, defending champion, arguing“a significant number of positive results” to Covid-19 in the Toulouse workforce and a “additional risk of contamination having been deemed too great”.
Furious, the president of Stade Toulousain, Didier Lacroix, considers his club, the most successful in the history of the European Cup, victim of«injustice» and D’“disrespect”, while he was according to him “able to play” Saturday against the Welsh. In a long speech, Lacroix denounces a decision “completely unacceptable” who “calls into question the credibility of the mode of operation of the EPCR [European Professionnal Club Rugby, ndlr]»the organizing body for continental competitions. “What I find incredibly outrageous is that the EPCR does not enforce the rules that have been laid down.”
How to prove him wrong? The health protocols in force in each championship should normally apply in the European Cup to the clubs concerned. Namely, for France, have 23 players, including at least six front row and 15 professionals, so that a match can be held.
Criteria met by the Haut-Garonne club, according to the starting XV revealed on its social networks. “But there, in an iniquitous, scandalous way, we decided to go out of the rule to seek an opinion from another medical commission”, castigates René Bouscatel, in solidarity with the Toulouse Stadium, which he chaired for a long time. A particularly angry Bouscatel: the EPCR “cannot afford to make arbitrary decisions that are contrary to its own rules. […] It goes beyond inconsistency or incompetence, it becomes an institutional problem.
On Saturday, the French Rugby Federation joined the concert of rants through its president, Bernard Laporte, who says he understands “the anger of the players and their clubs. EPCR’s decisions are unsportsmanlike and discouraging.”
I understand the anger of the players and their clubs. EPCR’s decisions are unsportsmanlike and discouraging.
— Bernard Laporte (@BernardLaporte_) January 22, 2022
Easy winner (39-7) in the first leg against the Welsh club, the five-time European champion no longer has his destiny in his hands until the end, this Sunday, of the fourth and last day of the group stage. Certainly, it would now take an improbable scenario, after the defeat on the wire of Castres at Harlequins on Friday evening (36-33), for the Rouge et Noir to be deprived of the round of 16.
‘Totally disrespectful’
But what about sports equity? “Today we feel angerreacted the Toulouse players. The EPCR does not care about the rules and condemns us to a defeat on green carpet without valid and admissible reason. The injustice that lives in us is at the height of our frustration. The matter should be taken to court. “This decision is legally challengeablesays Didier Lacroix. Not for sporting reasons, because the damage has already been done, but for economic reasons. And because there is a total lack of respect.”
The four home games the Rouge et Noir were due to play in recent weeks – against Wasps, Stade Français, Montpellier and now Cardiff – have all been postponed or canceled due to Covid-19. A big financial shortfall for the club, which was to play the first two sold out. And a sporting blow between the 0-0 draw decided by the EPCR for that of the Wasps and the rescheduling of the Top 14 matches during the Six Nations Tournament, in the absence of many internationals.
The Toulouse management did not wish to communicate the exact number of contaminations in its ranks, nor the identity of the players affected, but several internationals, usually holders (Antoine Dupont, Romain Ntamack, Cyril Baille, Peato Mauvaka and Anthony Jelonch) do not not appear in the composition announced for the reception of Cardiff. Two weeks before the start of the Six Nations Tournament, Dupont, captain of the XV of France, is one of the positive cases, Lacroix simply confirmed during his press conference.
Stade Toulousain is not the only French team to lose without being able to speak: Bordeaux-Bègles was also defeated 28-0 on the green carpet after the cancellation of its meeting in Leicester on Friday, for the same reasons. A less penalizing decision for the UBB, already mathematically qualified for the round of 16 of the competition.
Update Sunday January 23 with qualification for the round of 16.