Former Ireland head coach Eddie O'Sullivan believes that government is correct to seek the postponement of the Ireland versus Italy Six Nations game next week.
Minister for Health Simon Harris is to meet representatives from the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) today to discuss the game after announcing that he will be seeking the postponement of the game that was scheduled for 7 March in Dublin due to the spread of Coronavirus.
More than 320 cases of the COVID-19 virus have been confirmed in Italy and 11 people have died.
Although there have been no cases of infection in Ireland so far, Minister Harris said the risk of having rugby fans travel from Italy and congregate at the 50,000-seater Aviva stadium would be too great.
O’Sullivan was an assistant coach in 2001 when the Six Nations was postponed until the autumn due to the highly infectious livestock disease foot and mouth and he feels that postponing the Italy game is the right call.
"It makes complete sense and the explanation that the department gave is completely sensible," he told RTÉ Sport.
"Gathering 50,000 people into one place is not a good idea in a situation like this and I can’t imagine that the IRFU won’t take the advice, but I suppose they want to be told officially what the lie of the land is."
However the former Ireland head coach admits that he can understand frustrations on the IRFU’s behalf, given the apparent paucity of communication between the sporting organisation and the government,
"I suppose the IRFU will be trying to find out now if there are any other competitions in jeopardy," he said.
"The Pro14 is a cross-border competition already and I think the Ulster game has been cancelled in Italy so there’s a bigger picture here that the IRFU will be trying to get more information on.
"It seems like they found out the same time as everybody else. I suspect they probably would have liked to know ahead of time if there was an announcement that was going to be made that was going to directly affect them.
"I’d say that they’re not too happy about that if you can read between the lines.
"But be that as it may there’s also a bigger picture at play here because as I remember back in the foot and mouth, it started out with one week then it went to a second and a third so I think they "might be trying to get information as to what is what the potential is for possibilities here further down the road in three, four, five or six weeks.
"If the domestic season is disrupted it will almost impossible to reschedule that, whatever about an international, there isn’t time to reschedule the domestic season."
