French football chief: We made right call over swine flu

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France’s football league president has said the decision to postpone Sunday’s match between PSG and Marseille because of swine flu was not the catalyst for violent clashes between rival fans.

Meanwhile, English Premier League club Blackburn Rovers have confirmed three of their players and two coaching staff have gone down with the virus. Christopher Samba and midfielder David Dunn missed Saturday’s game with Chelsea. When asked if the pair were suffering from the contagious disease manager Sam Allardyce replied: “It’s definitely swine flu — you’ve speculated on the names and I’ll leave it at that.” Allardyce said Premier League rules prevented the club from attempting to postpone the game at Stamford Bridge. He also admitted there was a chance the virus could have been passed on during the match. “The Premier League has tried to sit on the fence by saying that we didn’t request to have the game called off,” added Allardyce. “We knew we couldn’t get the game called off because we were told way back in February or March when we took some guidelines that unless there was some government legislation, everybody had to do whatever they had to do. “If there was a swine flu outbreak, you couldn’t call a game off, no matter what. We fulfilled our responsibility by confirming two cases of swine flu and suggesting that it looks like one or two other players and members of staff had similar symptoms — and we made the same phone call to Chelsea.”