What should have been a decent rest week for France‘s Six Nations squad after two wins from two, including a first victory in Dublin since 2011, turned increasingly sour after an outbreak of Covid-19 hit the camp.
Late Saturday afternoon, news came out of French rugby headquarters at Marcoussis that lineout coach Karim Ghezal was the fourth member of the staff to test positive for Covid-19. With Fabien Galthie and William Servat already isolating, it leaves France’s coaching team stretched with just Laurent Labit and Shaun Edwards available to lead training sessions next week.
It had earlier been announced that France were to issue a new 31- player squad for next Sunday’s match against Scotland some time today after two more players had also tested positive.
Those latest announcements on a busy Saturday for France’s PR team followed a run of unwanted statements during the week.
The first, on Tuesday, confirmed an unnamed member of staff had tested positive, while Fabien Galthie returned what was described as an ‘unproven’ result. On Wednesday, a second announcement confirmed Galthie had Covid, while scrum coach William Servat was also positive.
They did not prevent France from naming a 31-player squad for the Scotland match. But by this time, however, concern was mounting that the outbreak was rather more severe than just the three cases among the staff.
And so it proved. Before he was diagnosed, Galthie had spent time with star scrum-half Antoine Dupont to celebrate an award from Midi Olympique. Sure enough, on Friday, Dupont returned a positive test and followed the coaches into isolation.
By this time, an investigation had opened after the France 7s squad, who had taken part in high-intensity training sessions with the Six Nations side before the trip to Dublin, was forced to withdraw from this weekend’s Madrid Sevens tournament after half-a-dozen squad members tested positive.
Yesterday, the FFR was keen to point out that, so far, early suspicions that ‘patient zero’ was a member of the France 7s side remained “uncertain and unproven.”
But, it was also revealed two more players who were likely to challenge for starting slots against Scotland – Gabin Villiere and Mohamed Haouas –were also in isolation after testing positive.
Meanwhile, confusion reigned over two Toulon players called up to the squad for the Scotland game – Jean-Baptiste Gros and Swan Rebbadj. On Friday, the FFR said both were Covid contact cases, then Toulon selected the latter for the trip to Pau and insisted in a sharply worded statement that, after all players had returned negative tests on Friday under the watchful eye of the LNR’s medical commission, the notion that they were contact cases had been debunked.
It will be interesting to see whether Galthie’s new 31-player squad includes the two Toulon players. It’s almost certain that Dupont, Villiere and Haouas are out – though all three are subject to a seven-day isolation period, rather than a 10-day one suggested in some reports, which comes into effect across France on Monday.
In theory, that would mean all three could return in time for the Scotland game, but the fact of the new squad announcement strongly suggests that they will be out of contention. And that would be the correct decision at the end of a difficult week at Marcoussis.
Beyond FFR statements about Covid outbreaks, there was a full programme of Top 14 rugby this weekend.
Racing 92 beat Castres 23-20 on Friday evening to overtake Toulouse – even if only briefly – at the top of the table. Castres, who marked their 115th anniversary this weekend, struggled at the set-piece, losing four scrums on their feed and eight of their own lineouts as well as coughing up a series of penalties. And yet, after being 16-3 down, they scored 17 unanswered points to lead 20-16 with less than 15 minutes to go. But then Argentinian Emiliano Boffelli, on his first start after joining Racing in January, scored the winning try.
Less than 24 hours later, La Rochelle, the only side with a perfect record at home in the Top 14, overtook both Racing and Toulouse with another crucial 16-11 victory over Stade Francais.
Ronan O Gara’s side will stay ahead of the pack until next week at least, after a thoroughly entertaining match at Lyon ended in a first defeat since October for Ugo Mola’s Toulouse. The hosts’ Noa Nakaitaci and rising Toulouse star, 21-year-old Dimitri Delibes, both scored twice as Lyon won 31-23 to climb back to seventh.
La Rochelle put their unbeaten home record to the test against Toulouse next weekend in a Coviddelayed Top 14 meeting.
Montpellier‘s Philippe Saint-Andre finally selected a fly-half at fly-half, bringing Alex Lozowski in from the cold for the trip to bottomof- the-table Agen. The Englishman scored 12 points as the visitors came from behind to pick up a very useful 19-39 bonus-point win.
Brive ended Bordeaux’s unbeaten 2021 with an intense 25-23 win at Stade Amadee Domenech.
Two over-the-tryline knock-ons and a foot in touch stopped Clermont racing to a bonus point inside 10 minutes against Bayonne, before Apisai Naqalevu managed to put the ball down in the right place after 12 minutes. Those early tryline terrors were not the only ones – in total they let six touchdowns go begging. But Clermont still crossed Bayonne’s 10 times in a 73-3 bonus-point win – their biggest win of the season.
After losing their unbeaten home record last weekend, Toulon picked up four points on the road with a tense 33-29 win at Pau.
