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Leinster’s Match Against Toulon Is Cancelled

Leinster were due to host Toulon with the winners advancing to the last-eight of the Heineken Champions Cup ©INPHO/Bryan Keane

Today’s Heineken Champions Cup round of 16 match between Leinster and Toulon at the RDS (kick-off 5.30pm) has been cancelled.

Following a meeting by video conference of a Match Day Medical Risk Assessment Committee comprising medical leads from the Unions, league bodies and both teams, with input from the public health authorities in Ireland, it has been decided to cancel the game.

The Committee, which received independent medical advice from Dr Brendan Payne (England) and Dr Daniel Koch (Switzerland), was informed that a Toulon player, who did not travel to Ireland, had tested positive for Covid-19 as part of the club’s routine testing.

Although the Toulon players and staff who had travelled undertook an additional round of PCR testing in Dublin yesterday which revealed no positive results, the Committee concluded that there were a number of high-risk contacts with the player who had tested positive and deemed the match unsafe to play with the participation of those identified contacts.

Having been notified of that position, Toulon informed EPCR that they could not select a match-day squad to safely fulfil the fixture.

Having explored all possible alternative arrangements to facilitate the staging of the fixture, it was decided that the match could not be played safely given both the current public health guidelines in Ireland and EPCR’s C0vid-19 protocol.

A Match Result Resolution Committee will be convened as soon as practicable to determine the outcome of the fixture.