Some of the Welsh regional players spent 16 days in quarantine hotels in South Africa and Gatwick before finally getting back to their families last week because of the Omicron variant scare.
Players and staff from Scarlets, Munster and Zebre were also caught up in the travel and quarantine nightmare. Eight fixtures were lost.
The stranded players will finally get back into action on Boxing Day, when Cardiff host Scarlets at the Arms Park. That game will now be behind closed doors following an edict from the Welsh Government to ban fans from sporting events over the festive period.
“We’ll take a bit of convincing to go back to South Africa, to be quite honest. The onus is on the URC, really, to convince us that it’s the right thing to do,” said Cardiff’s director of rugby, Dai Young.
“I know they’ve come out and made a statement that we’re going back there, but first and foremost we’d need guarantees that if something did happen, we’d be able to get out of there.
“The British Government showed their hand, as did the Welsh Government. We were pretty much stranded out there and it was very difficult for us to get out of the country.
“Once is probably bad luck, twice is a bit stupid really, isn’t it. We understand the league but it would be silly for us to put ourselves back in that same predicament of going out there without any guarantees that if the worst happened, we could get home.
“The URC have to find a way of giving us those guarantees. I don’t really see how they can expect us to go out there again when there is a possibility of us getting stuck again.”
