Autumn dates to be agreed

The Six Nations committee will meet again this Sunday in Copenhagen, where there is an International Board conference this week, and the signals are that provisional dates will be set aside for the Wales-Ireland and Scotland-Ireland games early next season.

A rescheduling of the Ireland-England game to next autumn also looks its likeliest destination, though the committee may ask that the feasibility of switching this game to a neutral venue in May be explored.

As things stand, the committee had fixed the postponed Wales-Ireland game for Sunday, April 29th, in the Millennium Stadium, with Ireland-England scheduled for May 5th in Lansdowne Road and Scotland-Ireland for May 12th in Murrayfield.

As of today, though, the Wales-Ireland game already falls within the 30-day window required by the Department of Agriculture between the ending of the foot-and-mouth outbreak and a full-scale resumption of sporting activity.

There is now, finally, widespread acknowledgment that the Six Nations Championship cannot be completed this season before the Lions depart for Australia at the end of May.

"You have to be a rocket scientist to work it out," admits the IRFU president, Eddie Coleman. "Wales will not play outside their own country, and Scotland will not play outside their own country, so the chances of the Championship being completed before the Lions tour are remote."

Of course, switching two or all three of the postponed games to early next season creates its own problems of fixture congestion. This could mean either a one-year deferral of the Celtic League or - and this may be more likely as Ireland are the ones most affected - there could be implications for the interprovincial championship.

"We cannot predict what the consequences will be for next season," admitted Coleman. "It's a very difficult situation and we've never been confronted with anything like this before."

Coleman anticipates that the Irish delegates on the Six Nations committee, Syd Millar and Noel Murphy, will have some clear signs from the committee as to what contingency plans will be put into place for the Championship - a sort of Plan C after the expected failure of Plan B.

For reasons that are not abundantly clear, Coleman and the IRFU believe that the Six Nations committee could seek to have the Ireland-England game switched to a neutral venue, or at any rate explore that possibility to the fullest. Perhaps a factor here could be the pressure brought to bear by the sponsors, Lloyds TSB, and broadcasters, such as the BBC, to have the Ireland-England game re-arranged for a neutral venue in May.

The Stade de France in Paris seems the most plausible alternative venue to Lansdowne Road, although, as Coleman points out, a host of contractual agreements would need to be sorted out before that was agreed, not to mention the possibility of the IRFU being compensated for loss of earnings.

Yet among many other things, this also raises the question as to how the Department of Agriculture might feel about Irish and English fans coming together in Paris as opposed to Dublin. Different situation, similar problems.

Furthermore, Ireland losing home advantage would devalue the fixture and the competition to some degree, while the Celtic Unions en bloc, and perhaps even some of the sponsors and broadcasters, might be reluctant to see the Ireland-England completed this season and not the Wales-Ireland and Scotland-Ireland fixtures. In this scenario, England could thus complete the grand slam and/or win the championship, making subsequent Irish trips to Cardiff and Edinburgh next autumn decidedly anti-climactic.

Meanwhile, although the Department of Agriculture has relaxed the travel restrictions between Britain and Ireland, a department spokesperson admitted that the re-arranged Wales-Ireland game for Cardiff on April 29th still carries "inherent risks with regard to the coming together of people who may have been on the countryside".

AS there is no meeting scheduled with the IRFU, the spokesperson said the Department was quite happy to adopt a "wait and see" approach. Most likely though, the Six Nations Committee will convene in Copenhagen this Sunday and finally take steps to call off the championship until next season.

Italy coach Brad Johnstone kept faith with the line-up which lost narrowly to Scotland when he named his squad for Italy's final Six Nations match against Wales.

Johnstone dropped Parma scrumhalf Filippo Frati and recalled winger Corrado Pilat, who missed Italy's 23-19 defeat at Murrayfield earlier this month.

The coach also drafted Benetton Treviso centre Dennis Dallan, Padova tight head prop Andrea Muraro and Argentine-born scrumhalf Juan Manuel Queirolo into his 25-man party for the match in Rome on April 8th.

ITALY SQUAD - Forwards: M Bergamasco, C Caione, C Checchinato, G De Carli, A Gritti, A Lo Cicero, A Moscardi, A Muraro, A Persico, S Perugini, W Pozzebon, F Properzi, V Visser, M Zaffiri. Backs: D Dallan, M Dallan, D Dominguez, L Martin, M Mazzantini, M Perziano, C Pilat, J M Queirolo, G Raineri, A Scanavacca, C Stoica.