Knights officials are pressing ahead with plans to fly more than 30 players and staff to a three-day army boot camp in Brisbane on Friday despite uncertainty surrounding the latest outbreak of COVID in Newcastle.
The COVID threat resulted in the entire squad and coaching staff being sent home from training on Monday and told to undergo testing as a precautionary measure following casual links to the Argyle House cluster.
Late yesterday with the players on a scheduled day off, the club indicated there had been no positive tests returned and confirmed the Brisbane camp would go ahead as planned. But the Knights will be making the trip without general manager of football Danny Buderus and head of high performance Hayden Knowles.
Buderus and Knowles have been forced to isolate at home for seven days after they attended a NSWRL Emerging Blues camp in Sydney last weekend.
Former Knights junior Jonah Pezet, who is now at the Melbourne Storm, was part of the camp and has since tested positive to COVID, with everyone who attended considered close contacts. Knights halves consultant Andrew Johns and NSW Cup coach Mark O'Meley were also there and have also been forced into isolation.
O'Meley was to have taken a number of lower grade Knights players into camp in Tamworth this weekend but will now have to be replaced by another staff member.
Buderus confirmed the Brisbane camp will go ahead but admitted to being extremely frustrated by the latest challenges.
"A lot of work has gone into this camp and it's going to be a big game-changer for our squad so it's really disappointing for Hayden and myself to not be going," Buderus said.
"The reason we did what we did with the entire squad on Monday to close everything down, go home, get tested and get ahead of it was to protect the players and the camp to ensure we didn't have any issues.
"There were starting to be little flair-ups everywhere of players telling us they'd been to a house with people who'd been in contact with someone that had been to the Argyle. It was like okay, let's be proactive with this, get ahead of it. But then came news of Jonah testing positive at Emerging Blues camp, forcing everyone who was there into isolation including Hayden and myself."
Even more frustrating for Buderus, his test on Monday came back negative.
"It's hard to work out," he said. "In Melbourne, if you are a casual or close contact with someone who has the virus, you just get tested and if it's negative, it's play on. If you are double-vaxxed, that's the way forward.
"For us, if you are double-vaxxed, you are still quarantined. It's the COVID world but that's not sustainable going forward."
