Jamie Roberts: People changed their behaviour towards me after Covid
WALES rugby star Jamie Roberts has spoken in depth for the first time about his coronavirus experience, and told how people changed their behaviour towards him after he emerged from quarantine.
The Dragons centre tested positive for Covid-19 last month, subsequently spending 10 days in isolation.
But with details of his condition having appeared in the media via a leak, the 33-year-old found his fellow citizens responding differently when in his company.
“People change their behaviour when they are around you,” he said during the official Guinness PRO14 podcast, The Late Hit, hosted by Darren Cave, with regular guests James Hook and John Barclay.
“For that first week after I’d done my quarantine, I went out into the world free again and loads of people came up to me in the street, asking, ‘Shouldn’t you be isolating?’ or ‘Am I OK to come near you?’
“It changes people’s behaviour towards you.”
Roberts repeated his belief that his name should not have been placed in the public arena in the first place.
“I was disappointed it got made public. You kind of feel that’s your confidential medical information,” he said.
Roberts said if players test positive in rugby’s Gallagher Premiership or the Premier League in football, there’s an announcement as to how many are involved but no names are disclosed, adding of what happened to him: “I just felt it was a bit wrong my name was put out there.”
The illness forced the ex-Cardiff Blue to miss the Dragons’ August games against the Ospreys and the Scarlets.
Fortunately, in his case, the condition didn’t linger.
The 6ft 4in centre made a prompt return to training with the Dragons and has since been busy preparing for his club’s away European Challenge Cup quarter-final against Bristol next Friday.
But he remains mystified over when and where he picked up the virus in the first place.
“I don’t have a clue where I got it,” he said.
“I had a long weekend in Croatia with some mates the weekend before. None of those I was with tested positive. No-one around me, not even my partner, tested positive.
“Fair play, the Welsh Rugby Union have a brilliant testing procedure. Everyone goes in, you get your test and you get your result back within 24 hours.
“That Thursday after I’d come back... I got a call on the Friday night from the head of medical, saying: ‘Yeah, you’ve tested positive.’
“As much as the obvious logic would suggest I’d picked it up in Croatia, I could have equally got it off a petrol pump in Reading.
“The fact that none of my mates got it seems to suggest the latter. “I was relatively asymptomatic. “I was very lucky I tested because I wouldn’t have known otherwise. I felt fine. I didn’t really have any symptoms. So, yep, I did my 10 days (isolation), did another test and then tested negative, and I was back training with the lads.”
Earlier in the pandemic, Roberts – a qualified doctor – won plaudits when he volunteered to help the National Health Service fight against coronavirus.
He also allowed a frontline doctor to live in his Cardiff flat in a generous gesture as lockdown got under way, while Roberts himself remained in South Africa where he was based with Super Rugby team Stormers.