Wallabies Tate McDermott and Hunter Paisami are the latest COVID casualties at the Queensland Reds and will be forced to miss Saturday’s final trial.
Instead of heading to Roma to face the NSW Waratahs, the duo will stay at home in Brisbane while teammates fine-tune for the kick-off to Super Rugby Pacific.
It’s both a blow but a preview of the COVID grenades that will go off across the 12-team competition this season as the reality of sport in 2022.
Losing the two players comes on top of James O’Connor, Jock Campbell and Jordan Petaia all missing last Saturday’s 42-33 trial loss to the Western Force with the virus.
Coach Brad Thorn is expected to be leading the Reds to Roma after his own COVID hiccup prevented him running the team against the Force.
For halfback McDermott, it mean the co-captain won’t have a minute of trial time behind him when he runs on in Round One against the Melbourne Rebels at Suncorp Stadium on February 19.
The immediate spin-off at halfback is positive with more trial time for promising redhead Spencer Jeans as Kalani Thomas' sidekick against the Waratahs.
Paisami did get some valuable minutes against the Force before testing positive in a post-match test.
Force coach Tim Sampson said all his players had been tested post-game and returned further negative tests Monday morning.
“Hunter and Tate are out this weekend and we are awaiting the updates on Jordie, James and Jock around their availability,” said Sam Cordingley, the Queensland Rugby Union’s General Manager of Professional Rugby.
Cordingley said it was a fact of life that teams had to deal with and did not alter the team’s goals for 2022.
“A level of sustained success is always the goal for the Reds and finals, at a minimum, would be this year’s goal in my view,” Cordingley said.
Last year’s impressive 8-1 record against Australian rivals but a flat 1-4 ledger against Kiwi sides makes it clear where improvements have to come.
“We got shown up plain-and-simple by the Kiwi teams last year. At the same time, those games gave us some key points to work on,” co-captain Liam Wright said.
Gains in defence, better ball security and an extended pre-season to crank up extra physicality have fed into the Reds’ season plans.
“We’ll probably get a scolding this week from our defensive coach (Michael Todd) after giving up 42 points against the Force but we saw some positive signs in the way we want to play in that trial,” Wright added.
Winger Suliasi Vunivalu is still a number of weeks away from playing but has been making positive training progress to strengthen his troublesome hamstring.
The Roma trial will be a good test for the Reds’ attack considering one of the big improvements being made at the Waratahs is more work and precision in defence.
There is more clarity on the Round Three clash between the Reds and Force which was presented in the draw with the venue still to be announced.
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Plans are ongoing to play the match in Perth on March 4 as a fly-in-fly-out affair. The Force will be based at Sanctuary Cove on the Gold Coast before that match.
Both teams will operate in strict bubbles but the chance to even wave to family from centre field post-game would be huge for the Force nomads who are based on the east coast for the immediate future.
The Waratahs have conceded only three tries in two trials which is a step in the right direction after the defensive nightmares of 2021. It’s early days but the calamity of giving up 40 tries in five losses to the Kiwis last season may have been replaced by a reasonable wall of defenders who know what a system is.
“There was probably not the time or emphasis put on defence last year. There’s a fair bit of attitude involved in that too so it’s good to see that we’ve started to build pride in our defence,” Waratahs coach Darren Coleman said.
