Strong winds forced organisers to postpone tonight’s World Rugby Classic matches at the National Sports Centre due to safety concerns.

Organisers made the decision in the afternoon after winds threatened to cause damage to the Members Tent which was eventually taken down by ground staff as a precautionary measure.

The tournament is scheduled to resume tomorrow with both semi-finals (South Africa v USA and Classic Lions v Argentina) now being played on the same night.

As part of the schedule changes following tonight’s postponement, the Plate semi-finals (Canada v Italy, and France v Australia) have been moved to Friday.

President of the World Rugby Classic John Kane joked that the tournament had been inflicted by a “Wednesday curse”, considering both last year’s Classic and the one before had been blighted with weather problems.

“Financially it will probably will hurt us,” said Kane, “but we’re getting used to it.

“It’s the Classic curse on Wednesday. We had the high winds in 2011, the heavy rain last year, and now we have this — I think they’re out to get us!

“Hopefully the winds will die down and we can get everything back up tomorrow and we will go from there.”

Grounds co-ordinator Chris Finsness said organisers feared the high winds could put spectators in the hospitality tents at risk.

“We saw the Members Tent was going to come down so we took it down ourselves,” he said.

“We also took two other small tents down before any damage could occur.

“Tomorrow morning hopefully we can put the tents back up and get them ready for tomorrow’s games.”

Two years ago the Classic was delayed after gale force winds wrecked many of the corporate hospitality tents set up for the weeklong event.

Tickets for tonight’s games will be valid for tomorrow’s or Friday’s matches.