The Canberra Raiders playing group has been hit by COVID-19 with two players testing positive for the virus.

The Canberra Times are reporting both are members of the Raiders’ top 30 squad but they have not been named.

Canberra players and staff were sent into isolation last week after two confirmed COVID-19 cases amongst the football staff.

While the club ended their pre-season training block early, coach Ricky Stuart said the playing group are still expected to return on 5 January.

“With this scenario of COVID, there’s going to be disruptions that occur out of the blue, we just have to handle it,” Stuart said.

“The big thing is we’ve just got to try and make sure once we’re out of lockdown, we have a good commitment to looking after ourselves over the break and not wasting the work we’ve put in over the past six weeks of training.

“We looked at training the boys right up until Christmas, we looked at all different scenarios and we thought ‘you know what, we’ve probably missed a session and a half of conditioning going into the break’.

“We thought we wouldn’t change anything now, we’ll keep it all as is. We’ll just come back on January 5 and continue what we’ve started.”

The news comes as the Canberra recorded 16 new COVID-19 cases today, with the ACT Government introducing a new mask mandate for indoor venues from tonight, 11.59pm.

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