Rugby league: Warriors Peta Hiku and Patrick Herbert to return home; Warriors relocate to Gold Coast

Peta Hiku is one of two Warriors to return to New Zealand while the team shifts to the Gold Coast. Photo / Getty Images

Warriors backline duo Peta Hiku and Patrick Herbert will return to New Zealand for family reasons while the rest of the team stays in Australia.

The Warriors are marooned in Australia for the foreseeable future after New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern announced everyone entering the country would have to self-isolate for 14 days due to the threat of the coronavirus.

The Kiwi outfit started their season with a loss in Newcastle last night and were scheduled to return home to host the Canberra Raiders at Eden Park next weekend.

However the new restrictions, which come into effect at midnight, make it impossible for visiting teams to compete.

With their team staying across the Tasman, playing their round two game against the Canberra Raiders on the Gold Coast, Hiku and Herbert will return home today in order to support their partners. Hiku's wife is heavily pregnant, while Herbert's partner just had a baby.

"It's a difficult time because this is about families," Warriors chief executive Cameron George told Newstalk ZB's Martin Devlin. "The boys are absolutely dedicated to playing football and doing their best for the fans, but this is bigger than the normal day-to-day decisions they make."

"We as a club focus a lot on families anyway. Peta Hiku and Patrick Herbert are sitting with me at the airport about to head home. That's just the way it is; they've got life-changing things happening in their lives - Pat just had a little baby and they don't have a lot of family support at home in Auckland, and Peta is about to have a baby. They're big things for these guys and they've decided, with our support, to come home. Clearly that's going to have a major impact on our team losing our starting centre and winger, but that's secondary in these circumstances when you're considering the family and what's happening."

George has met with the NRL and Australian Rugby League Commission to discuss options, and said they were taking things day by day.

"One of the real options was to leave the competition. The other was to remain here, assess it day by day and commit to round two, then let the players, myself and the club discuss what our options are going forward.

"This situation is changing rapid globally, so no one could answer a lot of the questions. That's the really frustrating part - everyone's in this unknown space."

For the next week, the Warriors will be based on the Gold Coast and NRL chief executive Todd Greenberg confirmed round two would go ahead as scheduled, with all matches to be played behind closed doors.