Wallabies are prisoners in a gilded cage ahead of a Test without equal

It might look like a five-star resort but the facility holding the Wallabies in quarantine is in every sense a prison.

Ned Hanigan has been ‘advised’ by Wallabies coach Dave Rennie to get a haircut

It might look like a five-star resort but the facility holding the Wallabies as they attempt to complete the first Test match preparation in history while in quarantine is in every sense a prison. Still, only Colombian drug lords would find life behind bars any easier than the Australian rugby team.

Yes, they are held in isolation but for Wallabies accustomed to sharing rooms with a teammate, that’s bordering on a luxury. “It’s not too bad because you don’t have to listen to someone snoring,” enthused Wallabies utility forward Ned Hanigan. “And some of the boys even have a bit of a yarn to themselves.”

The jailers, it seems, have been a little lackadaisical, leaving the cells unlocked, so inmates are able to sneak out and smell the roses. Well, technically, that’s not quite the case. The rose bushes in the “prison yard” haven’t quite come into bloom yet, according to one of the inmates on the inside, Wallabies press officer Marty Cambridge. “There are a buds there but they don’t look like they’ll come out for a couple of days yet.”

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True, there are other restrictions. Not everyone can be let out at the same time. There are 44 players in the Wallabies side plus about half that number in support staff and with everyone required to observe 2m social distancing, the yard simply can’t accommodate them all at once. And while Hanigan insisted there was a time limit to how much time could be spent outdoors, Cambridge was just as adamant that there is no curfew. Unless, of course, he is one of the “lags” receiving special privileges.

Most prisons come equipped with a gym, so inmates can work out their frustrations, but this one goes further and provides in-room service. Bands are even provided, though it should be noted they do not come with guitarists and a drummers. Rather, they are of the elasticised version, for stretching purposes only. Chin-up bars have been provided and in some rooms there are stationary bikes, though whether they have been installed as a punishment or a reward has not been entirely established at this point.

The only complaint so far has come from Hanigan, who finds himself occupying the cell directly below Michael Hooper. Any day now he expects to be sharing a room with his captain because he expects the ceiling above him to collapse under the pounding it is receiving from Hooper, whose fitness routine is the stuff of legends.

Like all confinement facilities, there is a rigid hierarchy and at the peak of it sits Dave “The Boss” Rennie. There are some repeat guests in what is termed, on the other side of the ditch, “a managed isolation facility”. Nic White, for instance, has gone back inside again but no one can match Rennie’s record. Three stretches already this year. And while the guards – who bear a passing resemblance to members of the NZ defence forces – are extremely accommodating and may even have asked some of the people they are watching for autographs, Rennie himself has been laying down the law a little.

Hanigan, for instance, has been “advised” by The Boss to get a haircut. No one knows what the consequences might be of failing to comply with this request and no one wants to be the first to finds out. Apparently Hanigan is always intending to get his long blond locks trimmed but somehow never quite gets around to it. He even fashioned his untamed hair into a mullet earlier this year but apparently this was not well received by a number of people, his girlfriend most especially.

Now, following the “advice” from above, he is contemplating a buzzcut. Still, Rennie’s order did raise eyebrows. Hanigan looks a little scruffy at times but he is not the worst offender by far. What, one wondered, is Rennie’s view of Folau Fainga’a’s rat-tail, for example?

Prison slop? Not at this facility, which incidentally goes by the name of Chateau on the Park hotel, Christchurch, when it is not being used for corralling the coronavirus or any trace of it. Each inmate has his dining needs attended to by a team of chefs, although woe betide anyone who overindulges. There are already whispers of some players being temporarily banished from the group back in Australia because they may have gone back to the buffet for seconds or thirds, as it were, throughout the season.

Tomorrow the “parole board” will visit, sticking its nose in. Or more correctly, they will stick a swab up each inmate’s nose and, from there, determine his fate. This is one parole board you do want a negative experience from. Everyone negative will have their sentence commuted and be free to join all the others in group activities, like training and having meals together.

But for anyone positive, life in isolation will drag on, unabated. Further swabs will be taken on Day 6 and Day 12 but given that it is Day 15 that makes all this worthwhile — the first Bledisloe Cup Test, way up in the North Island, at Wellington — no one wants to be sent back to lockdown again. A gilded cage is still a cage.

It is fair to say that in all the time that Australia has been playing New Zealand at rugby and in all the 166 Tests played since 1903, there has never been a preparation quite like the one the Wallabies are going through. Indeed, given that this is the first international played anywhere in the world in the post-Covid era, this is a Test without equal in the 149-year history of Test rugby.

It also happens to be The Boss’ first Test in charge. This is not how it was a year ago when he signed up for the Wallabies. Back then the plan was two Tests against Ireland and one against Fiji to work out the kinks. Since then there have been nothing but kinks and, as a result, the Wallabies now find themselves penned up in this luxury prison.

Still, Rennie won’t hear of any excuses, even if the only reward for good behaviour for his team is to be set free one day ahead of a run-in with the All Blacks.

You know what they say: “If you can’t do the time, don’t become a Wallaby.”