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James O'Connor sheltered in swine flu alert
By Jim Tucker
June 15, 2009 12:00am
CAUTIOUS Wallaby management cancelled a fan day at a Melbourne school yesterday in order to protect new crowd magnet James O'Connor and his success-hungry teammates from the random clutches of swine flu.
Fullback O'Connor, 18, is barely older than many of the kids who had planned to descend on Xavier College at Kew to swarm around the three-try hero created out of last Saturday night's 31-8 victory over Italy in frosty Canberra.
Japan's football team came through Melbourne airport in surgical masks at the weekend so the Wallabies are only being sensible ahead of Saturday's second Test at Docklands Stadium, with Victoria hit by more than 1000 swine flu cases.
The Wallabies are aware preparations for last Friday night's Broncos-Bulldogs NRL match in Brisbane were thrown into chaos after Karmichael Hunt was diagnosed with swine flu, players were quarantined and training sessions were cancelled.
"We thought it wise to cancel a day where the crowds would be a little uncontrolled around the players. But we're not going to run away from signing autographs for kids all week," Wallaby team manager Phil Thomson said yesterday.
"We'll have schoolboys on the sidelines watching our training at Xavier College and the players will mix in that more controlled environment."
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegrap...001023,00.html
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