Essendon star Conor McKenna released from quarantine, could face Collingwood after COVID-19 week from hell
Conor McKenna hasn’t kicked an AFL footy in anger for nearly a year. Freed from quarantine early, the Irishman will now do everything he can to front up for the Essendon in a Friday night blockbuster against Collingwood.
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Conor McKenna was on Monday granted an early release from quarantine as temptations grow for Essendon to deploy the defender on a halfback flank on Friday night just days after he was stuck in his Queens Rd living room.
McKenna was allowed to serve his one-match suspension for breaching the AFL’s COVID-19 protocols while in quarantine and he will now return to Tullamarine to press his claims for inclusion in the team to take on Collingwood.
McKenna, 24, is hoping to play his first AFL game in 302 days although the Bombers must weigh up whether he is game-ready after being locked indoors for the past 10 days.
Wednesday’s main training session looms as critical to McKenna’s selection hopes.
The creative playmaker recorded 35 disposals against the Magpies in Round 23 last year and he was well supported by manager Tom Petroro and Bombers welfare guru Matthew Little last week.
McKenna spent 25 minutes visiting his host family on June 19, shortly after submitting to his first positive coronavirus test – but long before the result was known.
The AFL had permitted players to visit “immediate family” just four days earlier and the Herald Sun understands McKenna listed his host family as his family in the form submitted to Victoria’s Department of Health and Human Services.
But the AFL yesterday decided the minor breach was worthy of a one-game suspension that McKenna had served while sitting at home watching Essendon lose to Carlton on Saturday night.
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The Irishman has spent 38 days in quarantine since the season was suspended after Round 1.
But a phone call from health authorities yesterday cut his third stint in isolation four days short because he had returned three consecutive negative COVID-19 tests.
However the DHHS will not allow teammate James Stewart to exit quarantine before Friday, despite the forward testing negative to the virus about 10 times.
The DHHS yesterday told McKenna’s seven “close contacts” – which includes Stewart – that they must serve a full 14 days in isolation because they were exposed to Mckenna when he had the virus.
The AFL and Victorian government are certain that McKenna contracted coronavirus because his swaps from last Friday and Saturday remained positive after they were retested.
Stewart, 26, is in the final year of his contact and can count himself unlucky that he must stay at home despite the fact he has never been diagnosed with the virus.
The DHHS believes McKenna’s close contacts could develop symptoms for up to 14 days and so to protect the community they must remain isolated.
Stewart was tested again yesterday and had accepted the fact that he would be spending the rest of the week at home.
Health authorities are satisfied that McKenna’s repeated negative tests prove that he has cleared the virus and is no longer infectious.
Top sports doctors Peter Larkins and Peter Brukner last week told the Herald Sun they would have no problem with McKenna being released if he had tested negative twice in 48 hours.
Yesterday’s expedited release was a welcome result for the 24-year-old who has been subjected to 12 COVID-19 tests and three stints in quarantine this year.
McKenna was cooped up at Crown Casino for two weeks upon return to Australia last month, allowed outside for just 15 minutes of fresh air a week.
“There wouldn’t have been too many people on the globe that have had as many tests as he’s had and have spent this much time in isolation,” McKenna’s host father Marty Allison, the man who recruited him to Essendon, told the Herald Sun last week.
“He’s incredibly sorry for maybe breaching the rules. He feels as though he’s let the club down, the players down, the supporters down and he’s particularly embarrassed about that.
INSIDE MCKENNA’S WEEK FROM HELL
Conor McKenna jumped into his Holden Commodore with a beaming smile.
It was last Saturday morning and McKenna, 24, believed he was 20 minutes from training and one sleep from playing his first AFL game in 290 days.
Then, his phone rang. On the line was Essendon club doctor Brendan de Morton, and the conversation went something like this.
“Conor, did you take your coronavirus test after training yesterday?”
“I sure did.”
“Well, the result is ‘pending’ – it’s saying it’s not complete …”
De Morton asked Dorevitch Pathology to investigate, and when McKenna arrived at Tullamarine he was excluded from the captain’s run and told to observe strict social distancing.
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“The alarm bells weren’t ringing too loudly. It wasn’t a positive test at that stage,” coach John Worsfold said.
But Dorevitch called back 20 minutes later to say McKenna’s test was a “low-level irregularity”. He was retested and sent home to isolate, alarm bells activated.
Bombers football boss Dan Richardson and COVID-19 compliance officer Lisa Lawry circulated a Microsoft teams video link to players and staff.
It was now 3.55pm and McKenna’s subsequent test had come back positive. The AFL postponed Sunday’s game against Melbourne and the Bombers’ bubble was ordered to self-isolate.
Chief executive Xavier Campbell briefly dialled into the call, his phone was lighting up like a Christmas tree.
HOW DO THEY TRACK A VIRUS YOU CAN’T SEE?
Victoria’s Department of Health and Human Services was alerted and contract tracing for McKenna had begun.
How do they track a virus you can’t see?
Well, DHHS has about 1000 tracers – made up of epidemiologists, public nurses, analysts, IT staff and environmental health officers.
The ‘Disease Detectives’ started by tracking McKenna’s movements in reverse from the irregular test, and then forwards.
That process is called “ring fencing” and the aim is to neutralise anybody exposed because, unlike other illnesses, there is no treatment – such as vaccines or antibiotics – for COVID-19.
It was established that after McKenna’s negative test on Wednesday he had a haircut and inspected apartments in Port Melbourne, because the lease on his Queens Rd flat was close to expiring.
After submitting to Friday’s “low-level irregularity” test – and long before that result was known – McKenna visited his host family, who he hadn’t seen this year.
“We were actually on our way out when he came,” Marty Allison, the man who recruited McKenna to Essendon and took him in for more than 12 months when he arrived in Australia, told the Herald Sun.
On Sunday night the DHHS informed Allison that his family of four had been identified as close contacts and had to quarantine until next Friday.
“He was here for about 25-30 minutes, and anything more than 15 minutes face-to-face is considered close contacts,” Allison said.
“But I’ll say this – it was great to see him. He looked great – incredibly fit – and he was incredibly excited about being named in the team to play Melbourne.”
McKenna’s housemates – brother Ryan and his fiance Stacey – were also close contacts and told to join McKenna inside their cramped apartment.
HOW BOMBERS HELPED AVERT A FOOTBALL CRISIS
McKenna was one of 19 Victorian cases detected last Saturday, and there have been another 141 since.
For coronavirus patients who have visited businesses, contract tracers might study CCTV footage. For Uber drivers they call up client lists.
For McKenna they forensically examined footage of Friday’s training session.
The Bombers also handed DHHS a floorplan of Tullamarine, a log of meetings, training summaries and intimate details of training drills.
But it was the vision DHHS prioritised as fears they would wipe out a cluster of Bombers grew.
After all, every human on the planet has been told to stay at home and refrain from hugging their parents.
If handshakes were becoming extinct what would health authorities make of McKenna participating in a two-hour full contact session with Essendon’s entire list?
But by Monday night the DHHS investigation found wrestling partner James Stewart was McKenna’s only close contact from the club.
Campbell said there was an element of “luck” involved, and that DHHS defined close contact as spending a cumulative 15 minutes within 1.5m or two hours in a confined space.
But Essendon’s documentation and protocols – in other words, its governance – played no small part in helping avert a football crisis.
Even Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge tipped his hat to the Bombers, saying his club needed to sharpen up.
As Essendon prepared for football’s restart it peppered AFL health and safety boss Pat Clifton, an unsung hero at league headquarters, with about 12 questions everyday.
“They were around ‘Can we do this? Does this fit in the protocols? What risks are here?’” Worsfold said.
“We took the protocols extremely seriously.
“The way the players have dealt with being told, ‘You can’t shoot around with the basketball while you’re waiting for the next session if it’s not with a player in your (training) group’, they’ve all acknowledged it and moved on without complaining or feeling like it’s too harsh.”
THE HUMAN TOLL
Health authorities discharged players and staff from self-isolation on Tuesday.
From Saturday to Tuesday they were only allowed to leave the house for a drive-through COVID-19 test on Monday although midfielder Dylan Shiel saw the lighter side of his three days locked inside.
“The HelloFresh actually went back into the fridge and the four-pack (of craft beer) came out,” Shiel said.
“I’m sort of enjoying this one game on, 10 weeks off, one game on, one week off. Bloody hell, you’ll be able to play until you’re 40-plus.”
Tullamarine was closed for deep cleaning as high-traffic areas such as door knobs were tested for the virus and so on Tuesday afternoon players were told to sweat through a local running session.
Normality resumed for Worsfold when he logged on to a virtual match committee meeting to plan for Saturday’s game against Carlton.
But away from football there was a human toll.
The average COVID-19 patient in Victoria has 10 close contacts, and seven were identified for McKenna – Stewart, the Allison household and his two housemates.
And then there was de Morton, a respected doctor in the community, who had to cancel appointments with all of his patients for the week because he was told to stay away from his Niddrie medical clinic.
“(McKenna’s) incredibly sorry for maybe breaching the rules,” Allison said.
“He feels as though he’s let the club down, the players down, the supporters down and he’s particularly embarrassed about that.
“And then he’s copped a fair pistolling from mainstream and social media. I know the club has some concerns about his mental health, as do I.”
With McKenna cooped up at home the AFL is in no rush to decide whether he has breached its protocols although, unless new facts emerge, a sanction would be harsh given how grey the case is.
AFL players have thrown their arms around McKenna. Brownlow medallist Patrick Dangerfield said he’d been “treated like a criminal at times”.
INSIDE MCKENNA’S TOUGH 2020
It has been a rocky 2020 for the Irishman.
McKenna has had 11 COVID-19 tests, given a blood sample to look for coronavirus antibodies, battled homesickness and played zero AFL games.
By Friday he would have spent six of the past 12 weeks trapped in quarantine.
As the world entered lockdown in April, Mckenna felt free as he went fishing and trained with his cousins in Northern Ireland.
He was at the picturesque family home. Complete with rolling hills it appears straight out of a Hollywood set.
But to get there McKenna had to serve two weeks quarantining at an isolated holiday house with fellow Irish footballers, and another two weeks awaited at Crown Casino when he jetted back last month.
“They only let him out for 15 minutes a week for fresh air (at Crown),” Allison said.
“Fifteen minutes a week for fresh air – he’s done it tough. He’s now in his third period of isolation.
“There wouldn’t have been too many people on the globe that have had as many tests as he’s had and have spent this much time in isolation.”
As a child in the tiny town of Eglish McKenna changed sports as often as he changed clothes, so stuck inside playing Xbox was far from his natural habitat.
He juggled Gaelic football, basketball, soccer, hurling, rugby and – until a growth spurt at 14 thwarted his hopes of being a jockey – horse racing.
McKenna is already contracted for 2021. But Bombers supporters worry this latest episode will only swell his desire to pack up and leave prematurely.
What does Allison think?
“I think Conor McKenna loves playing footy,” he said.
“He’s not a fan of training – his homesickness came at the end of a 10-week block when it’s training, it’s mundane, it’s boring.
“He just likes playing. If he could jump off a plane and do two weeks isolation and the jump into a season I reckon you’d have him for the rest of his playing career.”
Campbell said Essendon’s two welfare officers, psychologist, mental skills coach and de Morton were supporting McKenna and Stewart, while Allison said Campbell, Adrian Dodoro and Matt Little had supported his family.
On Wednesday the Bombers couriered some weights and an exercise bike to McKenna and Stewart, although there was no room in McKenna’s cramped apartment for a treadmill.
Bizarrely, whether McKenna actually had coronavirus remains a mystery,
“He’s gone negative (seven times), irregular, positive, negative, negative – and no one, not even the best brains in the country, can find a suitable explanation,” Allison said.
Armed with the knowledge McKenna’s Friday and Saturday swabs were retested by the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory, and confirmed as positive, Dr Peter Larkins thought the confusing case would best be explained by a positive test on Wednesday.
After all, testing isn’t 100 per cent accurate and that would indicate Monday’s negative was a false.
False negatives are far more prevalent than false positives in the community, primarily because testers don’t swab deep enough in the nose to catch the pockets of virus hiding in the mucus lining.
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“You don’t just get it and get rid of it in a three-day period,” Larkins said.
“I don’t know that anybody has documented that about this virus in the community.”
Mystifyingly, McKenna’s Wednesday test, like Monday, came back negative.
Was McKenna a “medical miracle” – as Stewart’s manager Peter Jess said – who had fought off a deadly disease almost as quickly as some people take to beat a hangover?
Worsfold, a trained pharmacist, didn’t think so.
“There’s some doubt in my mind (that he ever had the virus),” he said on Wednesday.
Campbell backed the testing regime of a virus doctors are still learning about.
“The thing that continues to remain relevant is that society keeps faith in the system and people continue to get tested if they are not feeling well,” he said.
Originally published as Essendon star Conor McKenna released from quarantine, could face Collingwood after COVID-19 week from hell