“It’s probably right” says Grix as Halifax’s game against Toulouse is called off

With France still placed on the government’s amber list, unvaccinated players and staff would have to self-isolate for at least five days upon their return.

Head coach Simon Grix believes that missing the trip to the south of France will help keep the integrity of the Championship.

He said: “Everyone will have wanted to play a full competition. But I think it’s probably right that we don’t play Toulouse based on the integrity of the comp.

“If we play the best team twice and everyone else plays them once, it wouldn’t have been ideal.

“We’re reasonably happy on that front but also, we’ve got some broken bodies. Everyone has, I’m not going to cry about it. Everyone’s got them. We’ll give them the weekend off so they can get away from each other.

“You get a bit bored of seeing each other at this stage of the season. Everyone will enjoy the weekend off and we’ll get back on the horse and get ready for Widnes the next time round.”

With the exception of the now cancelled Toulouse game, Halifax will have five fixtures left before the start of the play-offs.

Grix believes that maintaining good form in those final regular season games is important however, personnel problems will not make that an easy task.

He said: “I think momentum is definitely important when you’re leading into the play-offs. You want to find some form. I haven’t thought about the next five to be honest, we’re just taking it one at a time.

“But we are getting down to where we need to start moving our squad around as well because of the rules that are in place. With regards to loans and so on.

“We’re pretty much going to have the squad we’ve got. We might get an opportunity for a few loans but they might have to meet certain criteria. The weekend off helps us but we’re going to have to roll our squad around and still maintain some form.

“We can’t just drop everyone out and be happy losing. We want to win every game we play. Put ourselves in a position where we’re firing come the end of September when those play-offs are. We want to finish as high as we can, as do the teams around us.”