DALE Finucane's Melbourne Storm has arrived on the Sunshine Coast to make a new base out of Suncorp Stadium.
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The Storm made the move to protect against the deepening second wave of coronavirus infections in Melbourne and the State of Origin lock believes the club will be there for more than a month at least.
"The day we left we were still unsure where we were going, we weren't sure what the go with the Apollo protocols was, but we will be based here for a while now and our families got up yesterday [Sunday] - about 20 partners and 30 kids so it's been pretty good," Finucane said.
Finucane's wife and their young son have headed home to Bega for a few weeks and will relocate to join Dale later in July.
"Obviously we're away and it could be for a while, so it's important to keep your normal routines," Finucane said.
It's a big shift for the first-time father, who said he wanted to watch his son grow.
"Probably in the last month he's just started crawling and jumping up onto a bit of furniture and he can stand in his cot - with a little support," Finucane beamed.
"I'll be expecting teeth any time soon - it's a big time for development and I don't want to miss any of that, but I'm getting about 1000 videos a day from my wife."
While Craig Bellamy offered some words of compassion to the home-sick New Zealand Warriors, Finucane said the Storm was not facing the same predicament of the Kiwis.
"Their predicament is a bit different to ours being international travellers as well and I think he [Craig] felt for their predicament the Warriors boys are in," he said.
"No real end date for them and most of them without their families ... it doesn't help getting a big scoreline put on you and losing their coach - I think he just would have reassured them to keep their head up."
Finucane said the Storm players had a lot of empathy for the turmoil the Warriors were facing, but they were also trying to keep focused on the task at hand, with some injury concerns in their own camp ahead of a clash with the Roosters on Thursday.
"Cam Munster is getting physio as we speak," he said on Monday morning. "I'm not sure of the extent of his injuries, he's getting scans this afternoon."
Finucane jokingly referred to his five-eighth as "a pest", but also said the star was "tough, resilient and optimistic" and said the half was looking for a swift recovery.
Finucane said the injury would provide a disruption to the spine of the Storm and wasn't sure what tact Bellamy would take to shore up the squad.
From the Roosters' camp, Finucane said he felt for Victor Radley, who alongside Sam Verrills is expected to have ruptured his ACL.
"It has been his best season so far and I really feel for him to have his year cut short."
"We both obviously do our best with what we can."