EDINBURGH head coach Richard Cockerill, full-back Blair Kinghorn and one of the team’s physios have not travelled to Italy for today’s Guinness PRO14 fixture against Zebre in Parma, following a delay to the receipt of their Covid-19 test results.
Cockerill will remain in full contact with the travelling group digitally.
The revised selection for today’s match against Zebre will be confirmed on arrival at the Stadio Sergio Lanfranchi.
Zebre v Edinburgh: seven Scotland squad members selected for trip to Italy
Jamie Ritchie a doubt for start of Six Nations after missing Edinburgh match
Jamie Bhatti on his way back to Glasgow
In line with new Scottish Government 72-hour Covid-19 testing protocols for international travel, all Edinburgh Rugby personnel going to Italy were PCR tested on Thursday. However, the results for these three squad members were delayed on Friday morning leaving their Covid-19 status unknown, meaning they were not in a position to fly on the team’s charter flight. All other test results were negative.
Their tests have subsequently been completed and were confirmed to be negative.
“We continue to take our Covid protocols extremely seriously and, while we have returned two sets of negative test results this week, the uncertainty created by Richard, Blair and our physio’s delayed results meant we took the decision to not put the wider group at any potential risk and they did not travel,” said Edinburgh’s managing director, Douglas Struth.
“With support from Scottish Rugby the club applies stringent Covid-19 measures for the safety of our players, coaches and wider performance team to both protect the health of our employees and in acknowledgment of the privileged position in which we operate.”
“we deleted” ?
Solid win for Edinburgh – Showed they really wanted the win and put their bodies on the line.
Why was my comment edited?
What we deleted was this:
I think Mark Bennett was very good again and hopefully the next in line for a call-up to Scotland squad if injury occurs.
And also i praised the decision by Edinburgh, Cockerill, SRU and Dodson that those whose tests had not finished stayed back in Edinburgh.
No idea why those paragraphs would be deleted…