GLASGOW coach Franco Smith is confident that the URC will find a date for his team’s postponed game against the Lions in South Africa, even though league chief executive Martin Anayi said yesterday there might not be space in the calendar to rearrange the fixture.
The match, due to be played last Saturday, was called off when 32 members of the
Warriors squad fell ill with what was subsequently diagnosed as norovirus. Ulster’s game at the Sharks on the same day also had to be postponed when 29 of their players came down with gastro-enteritis.
League rules are that all games have to be played, but the calendar is already crowded and Anayi said: “It is difficult to find a slot in the schedule. We don’t like playing on international weekends.
“If we find that we just don’t have the slot, it wouldn’t be right to send mismatched teams against one another, and there’s a sporting committee at URC which needs to decide on that. On that committee, each stakeholder has a representative and that’s binding.
“So they need to hear when those games can be replayed, if they can be replayed. And if they can’t be replayed, what happens as a result of that.”
However, Smith insisted it could be done.
“I’m sure that the league will do everything for us to play this game,” he said. “If it was just us maybe it would be different, but I think the Ulster game against Sharks will also be an important fixture. I thoroughly believe that the league, because of the professionalism around it, will find a way for us to play this game.”
Regarding the outbreaks of sickness, Anayi said there were “some indications that they [the two teams] brought it with them”. But Smith poured scorn on that suggestion.
“We trained together Monday
and Tuesday here with the whole group. They left Tuesday night. Nobody at Scotstoun got sick. Nobody had anything, so I can’t really see that we’ve taken it with us. I definitely can’t see that,” he said.
Everyone in the Warriors camp who fell ill has now been given a clean bill of health,
according to Smith, whose team are at home to Benetton on Friday night in the last round of URC fixtures until the last weekend in November.
