In one week, French rugby has gone from a healthy air bubble to a breakthrough health bubble. Victorious in Ireland, Sunday February 14, for the first time in ten years, the XV of France seemed to have relaunched its oiled mechanics – since the arrival of Fabien Galthié at its head, a year ago – and approached the rest of the Tournament of the six favorite nations. But the coronavirus has come as a reminder that sport may try to evolve in a bubble, isolated from the rest of the world, the pandemic is tenacious. After the positive tests of three members of the staff of the Blues, including the coach, Fabien Galthié, the French Rugby Federation (FFR) announced, Friday February 19, that the scrum half and playing master of the team, Antoine Dupont , had Covid-19.
Asymptomatic, the Toulouse Stadium player “Will remain in isolation for the next few days, in accordance with health protocol”, specifies the FFR. But his participation in the third match of the Six Nations, Sunday February 28, against Scotland, seems very compromised. And the noose is tightening: the prospect of a wave of contaminations within the worried team, while the Blues must return to their districts of Marcoussis (Essonne) on Sunday, after a few days of rest – under high health surveillance – in their families.
The France team may have been bound by a strict protocol, like the other nations of the Tournament, to convince the authorities – French in the first place – to let the matches take place despite the irruption of the English variant, It was not enough. Despite a cloistered preparation in a privatized Nice hotel, the multiplication of PCR tests (up to three per week for players and management) and a battery of checks aimed at leaving the virus outside the walls of the Blues, the latter pierced the safe.
Only the results of twelve tests are known
The principle of the sanitary bubble, a fortress erected towards the outside to allow development in relative normality inside, also risks turning against the players and favoring contamination. Outside the field, where the players are already competing in conditions far removed from barrier gestures, the members of the XV of France have indeed approached the Tournament in autarky, together permanently.
And when, on Tuesday, the news of the contamination of Fabien Galthié – also asymptomatic – was known, the image of the French coach hugging Antoine Dupont without a mask the day before in Marcoussis for a remote award ceremony came back in mind: if the wearing of the mask is theoretically imposed inside the bubble, such as the individual room or the systematic cleaning of bodybuilding equipment, the risks of contamination of the best player of the Blues still remained visibly high.
Of the group of 31 players, restricted this year to strengthen the tightness of the bubble, only twelve had obtained the results of their tests on Friday evening. And except Antoine Dupont, all are negative – including captain, Charles Ollivon, center Arthur Vincent and hooker Julien Marchand. There remain nineteen unknowns, which cast great doubt on the Blues’ next match in the Six Nations.
Especially since the French rugby sevens team, which has taken part in some training sessions for the Blues in the past weeks, has just withdrawn from the Madrid Tournament, which takes place this weekend, due to a large number of cases in its ranks. Despite its own strict health protocol, a few fingers accuse the “seven” of having exploded the bubble of the Blues. But impossible to determine, in the immediate future, the “patient zero” of French rugby.
In the worst case, namely a massive contamination of the XV of France which would force the players to respect an incompressible period of isolation, the French staff always have the possibility of fully renewing the workforce. Summon 31 players who have not taken part in the life of the Blues – and in the victories in Italy (50-10) and Ireland (15-13) -, to ensure a “healthy” group before facing Scotland.
But in addition to questions of sports fairness, each new player entering the bubble (even breakthrough) must respect a period of isolation to ensure that he does not contaminate the group. This jeopardizes the next match for France … and reminds everyone, after two weekends of relative recklessness where sport seemed to have found its place, that nothing, in this period of pandemic, is guaranteed.
