Six Nations organisers move to prevent more late call-offs

The fixture has been rearranged for Sunday 4 March at the Stade de France with a kick-off time of 3pm GMT, while full refunds will be issued to Irish and French ticket holders unable to make the new date.

However, the scheduling was condemned by the Irish Rugby Football Union who are angry at being given a six-day turnaround immediately after their second trip to Paris of the championship.

Both teams must now prepare for four games in four weeks, though France are better placed to cope with that workload given their greater playing resources.

Once again the Six Nations, whose council met yesterday to finalise a new date, stopped short of issuing a full apology for the farcical scenes witnessed at the Stade de France.

Chief executive John Feehan accepted that changes need to be made to the current rules that only the referee, host union or Six Nations council sitting in its entirety are able to postpone a game.

“We very much regret what has happened. This is not something anybody would have planned for or would have wished to happen,” Feehan said.

“It’s deeply disturbing. It’s terrible that it happened. It’s very frustrating for the fans and we very much feel for everyone who was affected, Irish and French. It has happened and we’ve got to look at how it happened and make sure it doesn’t reoccur.

“We’re going to have to revisit our procedures for calling a game off.”

The game was aborted ten minutes before kick-off after referee Dave Pearson deemed the Stade de France pitch to be dangerous following days of sub-zero temperatures in Paris. The conditions for the night of the game were known all week, yet Feehan stated that the French Rugby Federation were convinced the game would go ahead at a ground that lacked undersoil heating. An outbreak of finger-pointing followed Pearson’s decision as the various stakeholders jockeyed for position and the recriminations have not ceased even though a new date has been confirmed.

Ireland, who as the away team face greater disruption to their championship schedule than France, must now travel to Paris and then play Scotland in Dublin six days later. As a result, Ireland’s players and staff will return home immediately after the game, preventing them from attending any functions that evening.

“We are disappointed with this decision,” read an IRFU statement. “While understanding the difficulties that a postponed game brings to the international and club rugby schedule, the IRFU had proposed to the Six Nations that the preferred alternative date would be Saturday March 3 with an afternoon kick-off. This was based on providing the Ireland team, who will be travelling for a second time to Paris, with a seven-day turnaround between its remaining four fixtures in the tournament.

“It would also provided any supporters wishing to attend the rescheduled game with an appropriate window of travel.”

The decision not to hold the game on Saturday 3 March was made because of that day’s busy programme of Top 14 fixtures.

French clubs had demanded France meet Ireland next season so they would avoid the prospect of losing their players to another weekend of international rugby, but this was not an option. “We sympathise with the French clubs – it’s very difficult for them,” said Feehan. “If we held the match on the Saturday, we would be going head to head with the club game and that would not be the right thing to do for the championship.”

LAST GAMES OFF BACK IN 1987

THE postponement of the France v Ireland match on Saturday night sparked conflicting suggestions about when a Six (or Five) Nations matches was last called off.

One report claimed that the previous match to fall foul of the weather was in Edinburgh 27 years ago, but in fact the last fixtures to be postponed were the opening two games of the 1987 Five Nations Championship, when severe weather caused the rescheduling of the England v Scotland and Wales v Ireland fixtures on 17 January, with the Calcutta Cup match moved back to 4 April at the end of the championship.

In 1985, the 19 January fixtures – Ireland v England and France v Wales – were postponed, as was Wales v England on 15 February.

The famous ‘electric blanket’ undersoil heating was installed at Murrayfield in 1959, saving games from postponement for decades. It was updated in 1991.