Possibility of a curtailed Pro14 season - Scottish Rugby

Scottish Rugby Union's chief operating officer Dominic McKay is expecting the 2019/20 season of Pro14 to complete with a curtailed version.

The tournament has been on suspension since March following the pandemic coronavirus and any resumption will depend on approvals from governments with teams from Ireland, Scotland, Wales and South Africa involved.

McKay is not expecting the tournament to resume before summer and feels with the time already lost, the majority of the league stage would have already been completed.

“We are still looking at scenarios that might see some way of potentially finishing the PRO14 season if restrictions allow later in the back end of the summer/beginning of autumn. And that will definitely be a curtailed end to the PRO14 season," said McKay.

“We are still looking at scenarios, the PRO14 executive are going to come back to us with an update on what might be possible.

“But that is entirely dependent on the various restrictions in the different territories.”

The Six Nations tournament earlier this year also suffered due to the outbreak of Covid-19 with four matches yet to be played to decide the winner of the edition.

Scotland with two wins from four games have a fixture with Wales still left but McKay expressed confidence over completing the tournament later this year.

“On the Six Nations, of course we are looking to find ways to reschedules those games.

“We are looking at doing that later in the year if it’s possible, around October/November time.

“But it’s not an easy solve of course because we have got two rounds effectively of the Six Nations and some under-20s games as well.

“I guess it will be a very challenging conversation but no-one actually has the ability to make decisions on this, entirely understandably, because we need to take guidance from our respective governments.”