Start date??

No club has forced the players to do either. We live in a democracy.

I think it highly likely players will be required to have the vaccine if they wish to play. Clubs will want to show that playing rugby is as safe as possible-even if there is currently no evidence of transmission from actually training or playing. See no difference to if you want to travel to certain countries you have to prove you have had certain inoculations ahead of arriving there.Taking a knee will hopefully have run its important course by the time the league starts so will not be an issue.

Or pay for it?? 

Looking at the Exeter situation, I find it hard to believe there can be any kind of league this season. Imagine the scenario, 22 weeks of fixtures with no breaks, Saracens get players testing positive and have to cancel 4 matches in which the opposition are awarded 5 points, thus ensuring they finish 3rd in the league?

Sail By wrote: How many teams are in full preseason now already? I think that more are than you think, but it would be good to look at the facts.

Camquin wrote: I believe I have seen statements that the vaccine will not be available privately. Frankly the risk to somone under 40 with no underlying health issues is minimal - though i am not a doctor and there are unknown long term issues associated with "long covid". According to figures I got form a paper by Prof Spiegalhalter 37% of adult males are between 19 and 39 yet they are 0.75% of all Covid deaths. Which is why they are starting where they are - if they vaccinate four or five million over 65s it stops over 2/3rds of hospital admissions. that then buys time to vaccinate the remaining 55 million.

All totally correct from what I've seen

Runitback wrote: Looking at the Exeter situation, I find it hard to believe there can be any kind of league this season. Imagine the scenario, 22 weeks of fixtures with no breaks, Saracens get players testing positive and have to cancel 4 matches in which the opposition are awarded 5 points, thus ensuring they finish 3rd in the league? More importantly the RFU are expecting clubs to go through a full 8 week pre-season, so paying players, with no guarantee of when the league will start . . so players brought back off furlough. Then they face the possibility of playing games in empty stadiums!!!! Lets be realistic and cancel the season and hope to get a few local "friendly" derbies when safe to do so.

Financially, that would make sense - would also serve Saracens right if they were out of the Premiership for 2 years - hard to argue against as they volunteered to take relegation.

covchopper wrote: I hope they do take the knee and show rugby believed in racial equality. It would be very refreshing to see it.

I don’t see what all the fuss about showing a gesture agreeing with equality and against racism is about. Keep politics out of sport or bearing one’s head in the sand and pretending racism doesn’t exist?  I appreciate my response is moving away from the subject of rugby but I do wonder why people object to taking the knee. No different to a minutes silence when someone passes away or on armistice.