British and Irish Lions tour managing director Ben Calveley has stood firm that there were no plans to take the tour elsewhere.

• British and Irish Lions tour managing director Ben Calveley has stood firm that there were no plans to take the tour elsewhere.
• Covid outbreaks in both the Lions and Springbok camps caused doubt this week regarding the sustainability of the tour in SA.
• The Lions face the Sharks in a rearranged second tour game this Saturday at Loftus following the postponement of the Bulls fixture.

Facing a barrage of questioning from incredulous British media about the British and Irish Lions tour continuing in South Africa, managing director Ben Calveley stood firm that there were no plans to take the tour elsewhere.
Covid outbreaks in both the Lions and Springbok camps tripped the alarm this week regarding the sustainability of the tour in SA, which is experiencing its third and deadliest pandemic wave.
However, the Lions tour chief, Calveley, would not be drawn into musing about whether the tour should be hurriedly moved to the UK, where Wimbledon tennis and the football Euros are experiencing near-capacity crowd attendances.
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“I’ve seen snippets … my view is that it’s wonderful to see people back at Centre Court at Wimbledon and fantastic to see people back in Wembley,” Calveley said.
“But we are here in South Africa. We made the decision back in March that we would make this tour work in this country, which I believe was the right decision.
“There are absolutely no plans to deviate from that strategy. It’s not as simple as hopping on a flight and playing the series on British soil.
“We are taking things one step at a time and dealing with the challenges as they arise. The focus on Thursday was dealing with the rearranged Sharks fixture, and on Sunday, we travel to Cape Town, where we have more fixtures.
“There are no plans to do anything different than that.”
Calveley admitted that organising the tour under such strenuous conditions was challenging but reiterated that they stood by their decision.
The Springboks recorded 12 new cases this week, including head coach Jacques Nienaber and key players Lood de Jager, Handre Pollard and Frans Malherbe.
This week, the Lions also confirmed a staff member tested positive, which put the midweek game against the Sharks in jeopardy.
“It is a challenge,” said Calveley.
“I’m definitely not going to sit here and say this is easy, but we are determined to make it work, and we’ve put measures in place to make it work.
“We are living in a very strict bio-secure environment where we’re governed by stringent protocols and a Medical Advisory Committee (MAG) that has independent virologists and infectious disease specialists that advise us on what we can and cannot do.
“This is the same for the Lions and Springbok camp. We’re tested frequently, minimum three times a week. We have no interaction with the general public, we’re playing in far fewer venues than would originally have been the case.
“And, of course, we don’t have fans in the venues. We are doing everything we possibly can to make sure that this tour goes ahead, and we’re determined to make it a success.”
Calveley detailed the full events of what went down on Wednesday, when the Lions game, which ended 54-7 to the visitors, almost didn’t happen against the Sharks.
The game was only confirmed to proceed two hours before kick-off (20:00) after the Lions camp received good news that there were sufficient negative tests to play the game.
It’s a scenario that might play itself out all the way to the three-Test series beginning in Cape Town on 24 July.
“Wednesday morning, we had one member of the [Lions] management team test Covid positive,” the Lions tour chief explained.
“He’d had four close contacts, two were players, and two were staff. We immediately isolated that group. They went into self-isolation.
“We then surge tested the whole of the tour party, both lateral flow and PCR tests. All of those tests came back negative apart from one player, who returned what’s called the single gene positive. It’s a very low level positive.
“Out of caution, we then isolated that player and all of his close contacts, and our MAG then advised us to test that individual again on Thursday, which we did, and it came back negative.
“He has to test again on Friday, and if that also comes back negative, then he and all of his close contacts can be released back into the bubble, and they would be available for the game against the Sharks tomorrow (Saturday) night.”