Footy fans and players will rejoice as senior rugby league finally makes its return to Coast fields following an 18-month wait on the sidelines. Despite best efforts, Rugby League Sunshine Coast was forced to cancel last year s senior competitions as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. While Beerwah managed to slip into a Brisbane competition and still hit the field, the rest of the clubs were left to call it a year. Having not played since August 2019, clubs will lace up to get their 2021 campaigns underway this weekend. The
DRAW The draw is out with the first round to be played solely on Saturday this week out of respect for the Maroochydore Swans, who will gather to farewell player Dale Best.
The DAA operates Dublin and Cork airports and has seen its business pummelled by the Covid crisis and curtailed air traffic.
Mr Philips said that the DAA expected last December to have returned the vast majority of its staff to 100pc pay from March 28. Those in areas where new work practices were accepted will now see that return to full pay, but in return they’re being asked to use up their holiday and time-in-lieu balances between March and September.
“Due to new strains of Covid-19, international travel has been much more severely curtailed, and our passenger numbers have fallen back to a trickle once again,” said Mr Philips.
Around 850 staff have already left Dublin and Cork airport operator daa since the Covid-19 pandemic began last year and around 150 more are set to exit the company in the coming weeks, staff have been told.
Stanley River Wolves head coach Rowan Klein said he believed the Wolves needed to bring their A-game to beat the Pirates. We re confident that if play our best we can win, but we re going up there with no illusion - we know Noosa will be extremely hard, he said. The game will be the Wolves first match without co-captains Tom Murphy and Chris Aiton, both staples in Stanley having success in 2019. Although the Wolves lost the dynamic duo, they ve signed major talent this year including Queensland Cup alumnus Rowan Winterfield and Dalton Phillips. Coach Klein said he hoped the recruitment of Winterfield and Phillips would make up for the team losing their prior captains, but knew the season would be harder.
Aiton has departed the club to play in Moranbah and Murphy is set to hit the top end as a captain/coach for a Northern Territory team. However, premiership winner and former Sunshine Coast Falcon, Ryan Hansen, will lace up again for the Woodford side in a shared arrangement with the Moranbah Miners. Hansen will play week on week off in an arrangement that worked well for both clubs in 2019. This year s captain Brett Doherty said his team was keen after a forced year off due to COVID-19. We were raring to go and all of a sudden it stopped, we didn t know what to do with ourselves, he said.