Sports Minister Grant Robertson has hinted at no special treatment being given to the Warriors despite the Kiwi NRL club's hopes of travelling to Australia this weekend to begin preparing for the NRL's planned restart - a scheme Mr Robertson called "ambitious".
Mr Robertson was asked about the Warriors' situation during today's Covid-19 response update, with questions growing around the Kiwi club's involvement in the NRL's Project Apollo, which hopes to restart the season on May 28.
But the Sports Minister said he hasn't been involved in any discussions about the situation yet.
"Personally, I haven't been involved in any discussions about that," Mr Robertson said.
"I believe there may have been some high level discussions between some people working on behalf of the NRL and Sports NZ."
Project Apollo will reportedly look at putting all 16 NRL teams in a bubble by having them all stay, train and play in the same city, but finalised details around the scheme have yet to be revealed.
The only certainty given so far is that the NRL hopes to restart the season on June 1 - a date Mr Robertson says is "very ambitious".
"No doubt, there's a lot to work through on both sides of the Tasman about how that would work," he said.
"Clearly, both sides of the Tasman are running strict quarantine arrangements at the moment and therefore that provides some real limitations on the ability to travel and spend time in situ.
"I did hear yesterday that the other NRL clubs had said that they wanted to make sure that the Warriors had the opportunity to undertake preseason training once they got to Australia, if that's where they got to, so if you think about that in terms of the timeline, it's pretty ambitious."
If the nail wasn't in the coffin already for the Warriors hopes of a departure this Sunday, Mr Robertson appeared to deliver it shortly after.
"I think overall, the principle we continue to have to apply is public health and safety and that applies as much to people who are professional sports people as it does to anyone else."
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