Blues players isolate in Wellington hotel

The Blues players have been put into a form of quarantine at a Wellington hotel while they await coronavirus tests.

Around the same time as the Blues completed their 31-16 Super Rugby Aotearoa win over the Hurricanes on Saturday night it was announced that Auckland was going into an alert level 3 lockdown for seven days and the rest of the country was moving to level 2, due to the latest coronavirus outbreak.

While the news caught everyone on the hop, the Blues had made plans for such a scenario and CEO Andrew Hore yesterday said that all of the players had been tested and been asked if they had been to any of the places of interest.

The results of tests are expected back today.

‘‘Our group has bunkered down in the Intercontinental,’’ Hore said.

‘‘They were tested last week, but they’ll be tested again.

‘‘They’ve all filled out a Google questionnaire on places of interest, whether they’d been there or their families have and they’ll all have health checks.

‘‘Once that’s cleared, we’ll look at our alternatives on where we’re going to base ourselves.

‘‘We will remain out of Auckland once we’ve been cleared and at this stage, we’re hoping that it will be a facility in southern Waikato, one that we can have on our own.

‘‘You can overkill it compared to the general population, but we’ll be taking precautions to keep ourselves in a bit of a bubble as much as possible.’’

Because of the cautious approach from the Blues, the players will have to remain on one floor of the Wellington hotel until the test results come back on today.

‘‘There had been a protocol that had been worked out between the NZR and the franchises for this kind of scenario,’’ Hore said.

‘‘And it was always going to happen to the Blues when you’ve got 18 units in Auckland.

‘‘We were probably far more heightened to it, to the point that the boys leave a packed bag in the team van.

‘‘You come down here [Wellington] with your little backpack, because you’ve got your boots and your kit, but if we’re going to be kept out of Auckland for a couple of weeks, then we had the bag packed scenario.

‘‘So we’d been on high alert with this sort of thing coming to fruition anyway and had been ready to go, so that we can still compete.’’

The Blues have a bye next weekend and are scheduled to play the Highlanders at Eden Park on March 13.