“Owen Farrell Was Packing A Scrum Hat In Case He Needed To Play In The Forwards.”
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Madness.
British and Irish Lions outhalf, Dan Biggar, has lifted the lid on the chaos that the touring side went through last week ahead of their midweek game with the Sharks.
A member of the Lions staff and a player tested positive for COVID-19 last week ahead of the game, resulting in a huge shift of plans with a number of players being forced to withdraw from the squad as a result of being close contacts.
Those players were forced to isolate for a number of days, with Biggar one of them and he has described the crazy series of events in his column for the Mail. The Welshman was forced to spend over 50 hours in his hotel room.
“It was chaos. Guys were sticking their heads out into the corridor to see who was leaving to get on the bus and who wasn’t,” writes Biggar.
“Owen Farrell’s room is just up the corridor from mine and he was packing a scrum hat in case he needed to play in the forwards. That’s how much confusion there was. I was gobsmacked they managed to get the game on.
“I had to watch the match on TV by myself in my bedroom with the South African commentary.
“It made me laugh when I saw Louis Rees-Zammit wearing my No 10 shirt. The jerseys are personalised with your names and Faz is clearly a size or two bigger than I am.
“It sounded a bit like the sort of scramble for shirts you have at local club rugby, where everyone sticks their hand in the kitbag and grabs whichever kit fits.”
A magician show was put on for the players over Zoom to keep them entertained with staff delivering food on trolleys to the players, fully decked out in PPE. They also brought some weights for the players so they could keep training.
“They also brought up some dumbbells so we could do a few weights in our rooms,” Biggar added.
“I did a bit of stretching and brushed up on some tactical homework. Myself, Finn Russell, and Owen had a Zoom meeting with Gregor Townsend to go through some tweaks and some improvements.”