SCOTLAND’s outstanding fixtures in the 2020 Women’s Six Nations have been cancelled, and their qualifying games for next year’s Rugby World Cup have been postponed. The decisions, taken by Six Nations and World Rugby respectively, mean that Bryan Easson’s side have no remaining games to play this year.
Having drawn with France in the Six Nations last month, Scotland still had to play Italy and Wales in fixtures that had already been postponed. But, with Covid protocols continuing to make travel and playing more difficult, organisers decided to call off those two games and the other remaining match, France against Ireland.
“It’s obviously disappointing news, especially as we were looking forward to the challenge of maintaining the momentum from our recent game against France,” head coach Easson said. “It’s been a tough year for the squad, but we fully understand the decision taken.”
England, the only team to have completed their fixtures, have already been crowned champions. They sealed the Grand Slam by beating Italy 54-0 at the start of this month.
Scotland’s match against the Italians next month was due to double up as a European qualifier for the World Cup, and would have been followed by two more games, against Ireland and the winners of the Rugby Europe Championship. That latter tournament had already been postponed, and, again largely because of restrictions caused by the pandemic, World Rugby have now decided to postpone the full European qualifying programme.
A statement from the global governing body said: “World Rugby and Rugby Europe continue to consult with unions and Six Nations Rugby Limited regarding a window that provides a fair opportunity to deliver the Europe qualifier, with the winner qualifying directly for Rugby World Cup 2021 in New Zealand. The runner-up will progress to the Final Qualification Tournament to be held in 2021. An announcement regarding the rescheduling of the tournament will be confirmed in due course.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here