Six Maroons get stuck in a Brisbane hotel elevator for two hours

It sounds like that start of a joke – six Maroons walk into an elevator … But it wasn’t funny for Kalyn Ponga and Jai Arrow two hours later when the doors still hadn’t opened and the temperature was rising.

Qld Maroons stuck in a lift.

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Queensland coach Kevin Walters says his days of placing curfews on Maroons stars are over.

But there were no party bans needed when 33 of Queensland’s top NRL players gathered in Brisbane for a bonding camp over the weekend because some of them couldn’t get out of their hotel.

A group of at least six Queensland players and trainer Alex Corvo got stuck in a faulty elevator at the Pullman Brisbane hotel on Saturday night for nearly two hours.

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Jai Arrow took to Instagram to share the drama.

The lift got so hot and sweaty that the players stripped down to their underwear to try and cool down as they waited for help.

It looked more like a sauna than a hotel lift with steam filling the tiny space and sweat pouring off the burly players.

Among the group was Maroons skipper Daly Cherry-Evans, Newcastle dynamo Kalyn Ponga and Gold Coast duo Jai Arrow and Phillip Sami.

Arrow said the group thought it was funny for the first 20 minutes, but as an hour ticked by the mood started to change.

“There was a few panicking – I was one!” he said.

Reed Mahoney thought it might have been a gee-up. Photo: Brett Costello

Parramatta’s Reed Mahoney couldn’t help but wonder if he was under some cruel test from coach Kevin Walters.

“We just wanted to go up to the rooftop bar after we got back from dinner to just hang out as a group. We thought it was a stitch up at the start to be honest, maybe it was a test from Kevvie [Walters] but then everyone thought we were joking when we initially called for help so we thought there’s no way someone would stitch up like that, surely not,” Mahoney said with a laugh.

Eager to check out the view from the top of the hotel, the players unwittingly crammed into one of the lifts over-estimating its ability to take the weight of at least 10 rugby league players.

“We were actually all there together on the ground floor just waiting for the lifts to arrive … we just happened to get into the left one. Usually it beeps when there are too many people in it but this one didn’t beep … we had heaps of blokes in it, we had 10 of us in there. We got in pressed level 16 and it went down rather up for some reason and over an hour and a half later we were still stuck in there,” Mahoney revealed.

Daly Cherry-Evans didn’t enjoy his time in the box. Photo: Adam Head

“It got pretty hot in there, man it was pretty hot … we were all clothed to begin with but we all ended up in our jocks,” Mahoney said with a laugh.

With the temperature only rising and still not entirely convinced their SOSs were being taken seriously, the players decided to mount their own rescue mission. Eventually the players pried the elevator doors open with their own hands.

“We got told someone was coming to get us out from Chermside, but that was like 30 minutes away from where we were in the city. But somehow Jai [Arrow] managed to jam his phone inside the crease of the doors to open it a little bit and then we all helped get the doors open. We rescued ourselves, when we opened the doors were on the bottom level where all the staff are, I think we were there the entire time,” he said.

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Kevin Walters would’ve been wondering what happened to his players. Photo: AAP Image/David Mariuz

According to Mahoney, two players in particular were relieved to be out of the confined space.

“Phillip Sami from the Gold Coast was probably the worst, DCE [Daly Cherry Evans] at the start was freaking out a bit but then got around in his head ‘we’re stuck in here now’ so we just have to bide our time,” he said.

Queensland’s annual pre-season camp has had a couple of alcohol-related dramas in recent years, but this was an entirely new saga for the Maroons.

Walters changed up the camp this year by combining experienced and emerging players for the first time.

For a few of them it was an unforgettable weekend.