Myles Landick, who was struck down by the virus earlier this month, says his squad would not have been ready for the August showdown in Guernsey due to training cancellations in recent weeks.
Reds Athletic, who now form the majority of Jersey’s Siam squad, have not played a game of rugby since March 2020 and could also be left without pre-season fixtures in the build-up to the 2021/22 Raging Bull Shield campaign.
‘To be honest, with cases rising and the position both us and Guernsey are in, with only people who are double vaccinated being allowed to go there, it was always going to be difficult,’ said Landick.
‘We’ve had a surge in cases within the squad over the last two weeks. A lot of those guys were booked in for their second vaccinations but now they can’t have them for a while.
‘We haven’t been able to train for the last few weeks with the bulk of our boys having Covid. We’re supposed to have some pre-season games – we don’t know if they’ll go ahead at the moment – and we certainly don’t want to be going into the Siam Cup having not played a game at all.
‘The be-all and end-all is that we don’t have enough players who are double vaccinated. And from a logistical point of view, trying to get everything to work, it was getting too late for us to say “yea” or “nay”. It’s no one’s fault. It’s just life at the moment.’
Landick added that the postponement – the third since the fixture was called off in May 2020 – is another tough pill to swallow.
‘Our guys were targeting the Siam and were really looking forward to playing in it,’ he said. ‘It would have been the revival of Athletic after not playing for such a long period of time. We wanted to come back with a bang.’
Full story in Tuesday’s JEP.
