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Storm hopeful of resuming Vic training

Apr 23rd, 2020Apr 23rd, 2020

The Storm aren't giving up on being back at their Melbourne training base early next month despite continuing to explore options over the NSW border.

The NRL club are in regular contact Victorian chief health officer Brett Sutton about the likelihood of resuming training at their AAMI Park headquarters on Monday week, in the midst of the coronavirus shutdown.

Melbourne chief executive Dave Donaghy said they had to be "agile" with their planning in case they got the green light to train within Victoria through a lift on a prohibition on mass gatherings.

"There's a lot of moving parts and one of those for us is the ability to train at home and we understand that it's out of our control," Donaghy said.

"We're hopeful that we will get approval for that at a time when it's safe to do so and given the numbers of infection rates on the decline, it gives us a level of optimism.

"We're having productive conversations with government and we're hopeful we can be in a position where we're training at our home ground at some point soon."

Donaghy said they hadn't been given any kind of timeline, but hoped if they were interstate for training it would only be for a week or two.

They are looking at NSW border towns Albury and Mulwala as potential training hubs, with the players set to be in a convoy home to Melbourne each weekend.

"We've looked at a whole range of options and those on the border towns that the football department have explored, the facilities are perfectly suitable and very safe," Donaghy said.

The club confirmed that when the NRL did restart Monday night games, which were dumped two years ago, would again be added to the schedule meaning there would be matches five nights a week.

The draw, beyond round two when the competition was halted, is also set to be redone although the Storm were still waiting on confirmation of this.


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