TREVISO
The Urc should start on September 24, to continue, after the exhaustion of the regular season, with the quarter-finals of the playoffs on June 3-5, the semifinals between 10 and 12 and the final on the weekend of June 23-25. . Benetton has been included in a grouping with Edinburgh, Glasgow and Zebre. But just over a month after departure, the problem to be solved, especially given the presence of the four South Africans, is always the same: Covid. And that is: how can the problem of the transfers of the Europeans to South Africa and vice versa be solved, if the protocol obliges, before the game or after returning home, to a 10-day quarantine? The times and the calendar, even if it consists of 18 games, that is less than the Pro 14, do not allow it. The last example concerns the Bulls, the South African club defeated, in the Rainbow Cup final in Monigo already entered in history, by the Lions: they could not face the Touring Lions due to a Covid outbreak. A solution, however not very feasible from a practical point of view, would be to have Bulls, Lions, Stormers and Sharks play on neutral ground: the criteria for establishing where are still to be decided. Another hypothesis, put forward this time by the newspaper Wales On Line, would like to divide the calendar of South Africans into blocks and start the URC for each of them with a trip to Italy or Ireland, countries that currently have less rigid health protocols. Decisions are then awaited from the Board, possibly prompt and above all definitive. –
And. Fo.