Bingo! Howthe Warriors maintain morale
The Warriors players will settle down for a game of bingo as they take a break from thinking about returning to playing in the NRL.
Tomorrow the players will reach the one-week mark inside their Tamworth bubble and by then the novelty of their situation would have worn off.
Spirits remain high inside the camp, but there will come a point where the monotony of being in quarantine will set in.
To help alleviate this, Warriors manager of football operations, Dan Floyd says they’ve made someone responsible for keeping spirits up.
‘‘One of our trainers, Dane Norton, he’s going to be in charge of team morale and keeping everyone upbeat.
‘‘He’s decided to take it easy for the first couple of days and let them ease into it.
‘‘But to be honest, the boys have just wanted to get in and train. Even in their spare time, they’re going to the gym or out on the field. ‘‘They’ve got the usual things you have in a hotel, like table tennis, a room with a Playstation and the pool outside.
‘‘I know Dane has teed up with the league club here and we’re going to have a bingo night on Sunday. We’ll all be sitting one and a half metres apart, so that’s going to be a bit of fun.’’
It was a huge logistical mission that Floyd masterminded to uproot the entire club to Australia.
The Warriors sent 65 pieces of equipment by freight on the
Thursday before they flew over, had another 55 on the plane with them and had another 43 personal bags.
While such a big operation comes with challenges, Floyd said it had gone well.
‘‘We’re pretty well versed at travelling, we do it a lot,’’ he said.
‘‘The hard part with this one was all the unknown, new stuff, like the NRL protocols, quarantine, health and police officials.
‘‘Because we’re in quarantine we can’t go anywhere, so we needed all our facilities to be in the one place.
‘‘One of our biggest challenges was getting a gym in our facility and that took quite a lot of time.
‘‘We eventually had a guy called Mick from a gym up in Erina, on the Central Coast, where we’re going to and it’s the gym we’re going to use when we get there.
‘‘He was a lifesaver and offered to cart all of his equipment down here and set up the gym for us in the event centre on site here. Without that we would have struggled.
‘‘It’s still ongoing – we’re still dealing with the families and the NRL and trying to get them over,’’ Floyd said.
Once the Warriors have completed their lockdown period in Tamworth, they will relocate to the Central Coast and move into an apartment-type setting, which they’d share with their families, once they get over.
‘‘We wanted to be out of Sydney, for the fact we could be there for five months, so wanted to be out of the city,’’ Floyd said.
‘‘If we’re busing in for a game, it’s not too far to go on the day of a game.’’