A handful of footballs, some carry on luggage and nowhere near enough strapping tape – the Warriors’ decision to stay on in Australia amid the coronavirus outbreak created a logistics nightmare for the NRL club.
The New Zealand-based club made the call following their season-opening fixture against Newcastle to stay in Australia to ensure at least that their round two match with Canberra can be played.
Simply staying wasn’t enough however.
The first issue was ensuring enough players hung around to face the Raiders at Gold Coast’s CBUS Super Stadium on Saturday.
In the end 24 players – including development youngsters and some reserves – have made it to a beachside resort on Kingscliff in northern NSW.
The club also had to get the OK to wear the away jerseys they wore against the Knights for what is, essentially, still a home fixture.
Football operations manager Dan Floyd has been the man who has had to secure everything the side needs to prepare professionally to face the Raiders.
“The boys only come with enough gear for a couple of days,” Floyd said.
“We only had enough strapping tape for the weekend.
“There’s our training equipment, training jerseys for the week that we need to get here.
“Footies. We only had enough footies for a captain’s run and a game not for a full week of training.
“Also, we’ve got boys back home. They still need to train. Who is training them? Where are they going to train?
“There’s just so many moving parts that we needed to consider but after the initial 24 hours we’ve got on top of it and feeling a lot better.”
Floyd said the rugby league community, including rival NRL teams, had played a huge part in ensuring the Warriors can go ahead with Saturday’s match.
Whether they can continue that if needed beyond this weekend however is another issue.
“We’ve got a game on Saturday that we need to prepare for,” he said.
“We’re just planning for the week ahead at this stage and we’ll deal with that as it comes.”