Toulon-Bath: Simon Halliday unsure of rearrangement

Toulon, who now feature former Australia scrum-half Quade Cooper, have won European rugby's top competition for the past three seasons

A busy schedule is creating a dilemma in trying to rearrange the Toulon-Bath fixture, European Professional Club Rugby chairman Simon Halliday says.

Sunday's European Rugby Champions Cup match was one of five to be postponed after Friday's Paris attacks.

"All the fixtures are already compressed, we have a unique problem," Halliday told BBC Radio Bristol.

"There is turnaround issues, players need to recover, it's a big match in what is seen as the toughest pool."

Former Bath player Halliday said the issue would hopefully resolved in the next 48 hours.

"There is no immediate, obvious weekend we can choose." he said. "That is fact.

"If we did play a midweek game, are you faced with trying to re-arrange a weekend Premiership match? That is a possibility."

Halliday added teams could not just play a big pool match away from home and then an important Premiership game two days later.

"It puts a lot of pressure on people," he said.

"We need to talk to the rest of the clubs in the pool, as it has knock-on effects for the rest of the tournament. We can't just look at the rule book, we need to get to the best solution."

But Bath chairman Bruce Craig has suggested it may never take place because of the difficulty in rescheduling it due to fixture congestion after the World Cup.

"The midweek option is not an option to my mind as that would be to the detriment of player welfare as well as the integrity of two competitions, an important Champions Cup game being squeezed in with all the travel issues between two Premiership weekends," he told the Daily Telegraph.

"There is no way we should be letting that happen. You can't play three high-profile games in a week."

However, Toulon president Mourad Boudjellal has suggested it could be played during the 2016 Six Nations.

"Playing on Wednesday isn't possible," he told French sports daily L'Equipe.

"I can only see one solution... It would mean that the (national team) coaches would have to accept not being able to call up international players of Bath or Toulon in order for us to be able to play the match during a matchday of the Six Nations."