Coronavirus travel fears could bring early end to Super Rugby season

This weekend’s round of Super Rugby will proceed as scheduled but beyond that, no one appears to have a clue.

James O’Connor returns to the Reds’ starting line-up for the clash against the Lions. Picture: AAP

This weekend’s round of Super Rugby will proceed as scheduled — allowing for the switch of the Sunwolves-Crusaders match from Tokyo to Brisbane — but beyond that, no one appears to have a clue where the coronavirus crisis will lead.

SANZAAR was attempting on Thursday to arrange a phone hook-up of the chief executive’s of the national rugby bodies of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina and the mere fact that the attempt was being made demonstrated how dramatically events have escalated.

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Raelene Castle and her counterparts were in the act of flying home from a SANZAAR board meeting in London, where the coronavirus crisis was top of the agenda. Yet so quickly has the situation evolved this week that another phone hook-up was deemed necessary.

“Nothing will change before this weekend …. I really can’t see that,” a Rugby Australia spokesman said on Thursday. “This weekend will go ahead as planned but it’s evolving all the time.”

The chief medical officers of the four unions are formally conferring once a week but in reality are exchanging information daily, while Rugby Australia is conducting daily tests on all players, coaches and match officials. They insist that all tests have come back negative, although they also admit that patient confidentiality would prevent them from naming any who do contract the virus.

If the suspension of the NBA season in the USA was caused by a single positive result from one of the Utah Jazz players, it gives some indication of how precarious a competition based on global travel Super Rugby really is.

Officials are openly discussing whether the competition can proceed beyond its seventh round this weekend. That means there are another 11 rounds of the competition remaining, before the play-offs, and the coronavirus count among the SANZAAR nations is growing by the hour. Aside from Japan, which has already suspended all professional sport, Australia has the most reported cases, 128 at the time of writing, with Argentina 19, South Africa 13 and New Zealand five.

The Super Rugby chief executives also had a conference call on Wednesday at which one Australian franchise boss expressed concern over the reliability of international travel. The Melbourne Rebels, who have the bye this weekend and then will fly out immediately after playing the Sunwolves at AAMI Park, have already been alerted that South African Airways have cancelled flights to South America, which has forced them to move to another airline for their trip to Argentina.

That hopefully will give authorities time to intensively clean AAMI Park after a spectator who attended the Rebels-Lions match there last Saturday tested positive.

Waratahs coach Rob Penney, meanwhile, admitted he would be comfortable with his team playing behind closed doors if SANZAAR decides that is necessary. Certainly it would enable the competition to proceed, albeit only as a spectacle on television. “It’s still on telly and I’m a massive believer that it doesn’t matter who you play for or who you play against really as an athlete, you’ve got pride in your own performance,” Penney said.

“But for the game’s sake and for the sake of the community and everybody in it, we just have to do the right thing by the administrators and what they deem to be the most positive thing, given these difficult circumstances.”

Queensland Reds, who will play the Bulls in the second match of the double-header at Suncorp Stadium on Saturday, have rested Test lock Izack Rodda and an unwell JP Smith from their pack. It is the second week in a row that Rodda has been rested, which is fuelling suspicions there may be more to his calf injury than merely a strain.

With Harry Hockings and Angus Blyth forming the locking pairing and Lukhan Salakaia-Loto — fresh from arguably his greatest game for Queensland against the Crusaders — all on duty, the Reds should be able to claim all their own lineout ball.

Scrums, however, could be a battle. Smith, now Wallabies-eligible, has been outstanding on the loosehead side this season, but his absence means that Dane Zander will make his starting debut for the Reds.

Like the French generals in World War II, there is a distinct suspicion that the Reds may be still fighting their last war — against the Crusaders — by naming a specialist goalkicker in Bryce Hegarty on the wing. The lack of a goalkicker cost them dearly last week but certainly it is never a load to carry to have a reputable kicker and Hegarty rarely fails to perform.

James O’Connor will make a welcome return at five-eighth but it still pains to see Isaac Lucas forced back to the bench to accommodate him.