Leinster target mid-May return to training - for now
Leinster are targeting a return to collective training in mid-May but in the knowledge that the best-laid plans count for little right now in an environment shaped and altered by the coronavirus and attempts to contain it in Ireland and worldwide.
The rugby season, like so much else, has been placed on hold.
Ireland's last two Six Nations games, at home to Italy and away to France, were among those to be impacted. Leinster have already lost four games to the crisis, including a Heineken Champions Cup quarter-final money-spinner at the Aviva against Saracens.
Munster were supposed to be visiting the same address this coming Saturday in another game worth a considerable amount of money so it's no surprise to hear Leinster operations manager Guy Easterby say today that they have "no particular date in mind" regarding a return to play.
“Listening to [Minister for Health] Simon Harris last night, he was saying that the social distancing piece isn't just going to disappear when the current lockdown restrictions are lifted [on May 5th]. Everything we do will be guided by the government and their guidelines,” said Easterby on a media conference call on Monday afternoon.
“We would love to get the season finished in some way, shape or form. We made it very clear to all the bodies involved that we will do whatever is involved to play our part. There are extra challenges involved with our league in that you have to dash off on a plane to play games which the Top 14 or Premiership wouldn't have.”
The four provinces are currently running individual training programmes for players restricted to their houses and apartments and Easterby envisages a collective pre-season amounting to “weeks rather than months” when any return-to-play presents itself.
How to finish the season is another matter entirely.
The Guinness PRO14 has already cancelled its planned final in Cardiff and postponed the season indefinitely. Among the suggested courses of action now is one drawing a line through the rest of the regular season fixtures and playing the decider between the two conferences' current leaders.
That would be Leinster and Edinburgh.
“Obviously it wouldn't be too bad for us if it went straight into a final,” said Easterby. “We would take that but at the same time you would love the season to be finished in some way, shape or form, whether that be a semi-final and final or whatever.”
The Heineken Champions Cup has also been cast into limbo.
Easterby made clear again and again that Leinster would buy into any decision which is best for the PRO14 or for the Champions Cup and that includes the thorny question as to whether games behind closed doors may be required for a period of time.
“Nothing is ruled in and nothing is ruled out at this point,” he said.
That includes the less likely possibility further down the line of a World Club Cup competition, which has been mooted by French federation president Bernard Laporte as a replacement for the European Cup and by EPCR as a tournament that could complement it.
“The challenge is around the timing of that. When you look at rugby league and the champions of the Super League in England against the NRL champions in Australia, it ends up being where one team is playing their first pre-season game against a team that is halfway through their season or whatever it might be.”
The questions continue to outnumber the answers.
