GARETH Widdop has been talking about how Covid-19 has impacted him and the Warrington Wolves team this year.

After having left Halifax aged 16 to live in Australia, the England international returned to the UK this year for his first crack at Super League with Warrington Wolves on the back of a stellar career in the NRL.

Nobody could have foreseen coronavirus changing the world as it has done this year, so not only did the scrum half and his family have the upheaval of moving to the other side of the world for this new chapter but have had an unprecedented global pandemic thrown into the mix too.

So how has he coped?

“I don’t really know how to answer that,” said the 31-year-old former Melbourne Storm and St George Illawarra Dragons star, a marquee signing for The Wire.

“Turn up to training the best I can, play at the weekend, but each and every week is different because of all the rules and restrictions, not being able to go out and do certain things.

“Stay home, lock myself in, and play on the PlayStation.

“It’s difficult for everyone. It’s the unknown, I guess. Each and every day is different, and circumstances have changed.

“It’s not what I expected. It’s my job to turn out every day and train and to try and play well at the weekend, and that’s all I can control and worry about.

“It’s not ideal for anyone, but it’s our job to go out there and perform well and make sure we do everything right as we prepare well through the week, even the coaching staff, each and every week.

“That’s all we can focus on. Everything else, the Covid and all of that, is out of our control. Us as individuals and as a team we just have to knuckle down on a Monday and prepare for the weekend.

“Obviously there’s only four or five games left now, so it’s important that we’re playing some good football coming into the back end of the year.

“We’ve got a big game on Monday, that’s our next job, then we can move on.

“We’ll never see anything like this again. It’s life though isn’t it? This isn’t the way I planned it to go, but we’re making the best out of a bad situation. And ultimately we’ve still got a trophy that’s there at the end of the year for one of the teams to win.

“We’ve got four to five weeks, it’s not a lot of time left really to just work hard, knuckle down and focus on the job ahead.”

There has been one ray of sunshine in a difficult first year for Widdop.

He said: “I’ve had a fair bit of time with my grandparents which has been nice. Other than that we can’t really get out and about and do much. That’s a little bit of a positive I suppose out of a bad situation that hasn’t been ideal.”

Rumours have risen again over the past week that Widdop may cut short his time with Warrington to return to Australia for family reasons and he was given the opportunity to clear up his position.

“You probably know better than me, because everyone seems to know more about my life than me at the minute,” he said.

“I knocked that on the head six or seven weeks ago, so I don’t need to talk about it again.

“I’m at Warrington Wolves, I’m a Wire player and that’s all there is to it.”