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Wales Online
Wales Online
Sport
Ben James

The Welsh health minister who said Wales v Scotland was ON speaks for first time about WRU decision to cancel Six Nations clash

Wales' Health minister has spoken for the first time about the sudden decision to postpone Wales' Six Nations clash with Scotland, which caused such controversy.

The WRU announced on Friday afternoon that the game was off, even though Vaughan Gething had announced on Thursday in a press conference that the match was to go ahead as scheduled despite the coronavirus outbreak.

Thousands of Scottish fans had descended on Cardiff and angrily hit out at the decision to call off the fixture at such short notice.

Scotland fans fume as Six Nations game with Wales is called off at last minute:

What fans in Cardiff think about the Wales v Scotland game being called off at last minute

Gething made it clear that the medical advice had not changed, but the WRU felt compelled to act due to the changing sporting landscape - with the vast majority of fixtures having been postponed because of the growing coronavirus crisis.

And speaking on BBC Radio Wales on Sunday morning, the Welsh Health Minister was asked whether it was a mistake not to postpone the match earlier.

"I think it's really difficult," he said.

"The WRU found themselves in a pretty extraordinary position."

When asked whether a negative response from the public was a factor behind the swift u-turn, Gething said: "Do you just say public opinion is the single determining factor?

"In all of this, there's lots of public opinion on schools closed and we're not going to close schools tomorrow. That's not going to happen.

"We may close them at some point if it's a necessary measure.

"It's about what you expect decision makers to do. The medical advice about the risk to people going to the rugby didn't change.

"What did change was the fact that the rest of sporting world decided that, regardless of that advice, they wanted to put off events."

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