Dominic Thiem Confident of Adapting to the Conditions at Australian Open 2021

Rugby Australia has full confidence both Super Rugby AU and the trans-Tasman competitions will take place ahead of this year’s Tests in Australia and New Zealand although it is prepared for it to be a movable feast.

Australia will play the first of three Tests against France in the first weekend in July, while the All Blacks are set to meet Italy in two internationals before playing Fiji. And while the opening round of Super Rugby AU has been set down for a fixed date, February 19, ultimately leading into the six-week trans-Tasman competition, RA officials are learning to be flexible and plan on the run.

At present, planning for the season is progressing smoothly but RA high-performance manager Ben Whitaker has learned from his 2020 experience to be prepared to make and change his plans in an instant. Ironically, all the work the organisation put into plans that ultimately were scrapped might actually be of value.

“There is no doubt that we are better off today because of a lot of the work that we did last year,” Whitaker said. “It doesn’t mean that we are going to breeze through but we have already called upon a lot of things that we modelled and looked at last year.”

In terms of Super Rugby AU, Plan A simply involves going ahead with the draw as published. Plan B, however, is utterly at the mercy of health borders and travel restrictions.

“We have an internal group that meets daily to assess where we are at and that includes our chief medical officer, our head of government relations and myself,” said Whitaker. “And then a few times a week we have what was called our Return to Play Committee last year but it is more a COVID-safe management group.
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“That is a bit more representative in that we’ve got club representation through Baden Stephenson (the Melbourne Rebels chief executive), and we have player representation through Matt Toomua and Justin Harrison (the RUPA boss).

 

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“It is scary trying to predict. If things stay the same, the next stage of planning would be to look at things like charter flights which we are well versed on from last year.

“So, for round one, the Waratahs would probably have to charter a flight into Brisbane and out with an exemption based on our COVID-safe plan with the Queensland government. Up and back in the one day.”

Yet the domestic competition is shaping up as a walk in the woods compared to the trans-Tasman competition. The massive complication — if regulations remain unchanged — is that New Zealand would impose the same two-week isolation conditions on the Australian sides if they cross the Tasman as it imposed last year on the Wallabies before the two Bledisloe Cup Tests.

And if the All Blacks cross the ditch to play their trans-Tasman matches in Australia, then on their return they too would require going into isolation.

The bottom line is that both countries need time to clear quarantine and give themselves every chance to prepare for their respective Tests.

“If we did have to contend with a two-week isolation period at either end, we have to factor that in to how we schedule the competition. The first thing you do is try to not affect the schedule because so many people are affected, particularly broadcasters.”

In the ultimate worst-case scenario, it may be that the Anzac partners are forced to call off the trans-Tasman series for this season but Whitaker is adamant that even if the pandemic worsens, that won’t occur.

“The only thing I can say there is that we ran a Tri Nations series over six weeks last year,” he said. “We are not being **bleep**y in any way but we have a number of ways of making it happen.

“The simple idea would be a hub scenario. But probably more likely, a hybrid-type model could be a contingency plan.”