Ideally she would be back in Perth lacing up the boots for the Cottesloe Sheshells but for Claudia Nielsen there has been a silver lining to the virtual shutdown of sport - she has got to spend more time with her family.
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Nielsen has been back in Tamworth since late February, the coronavirus-enforced lockdown extending her visit into a more permanent sojourn.
It is the most time she has spent at home for probably five years and has been nice, she said. As well as getting to spend some unexpected extra time with her family, she has enjoyed swapping the rugby boots for work boots.
Nielsen's father Geoff is the farm manager of Calrossy's working farm - Tangara. An alumni of the school herself, Claudia has been helping him and her mum Bronwyn (who is the school's head of agriculture) look after the farm with the students unable to be as involved in the day-to-day running as they normally would.
Something she does enjoy, it has certainly made the current predicament more bearable.
"If you're going to be isolated it might as well be somewhere nice and rural and with a lot to do," Nielsen said.
She is of course missing being involved in sport, which is what took her firstly to Canberra and then Perth.
Having just wrapped up her second Super W campaign with Rugby WA when the crisis really started unfolding, she has been trying to keep herself in shape as best she can.
The current situation is made the tougher to swallow by the fact that Nielsen had decided to throw all her efforts behind rugby this season and see where she could go with it.
"It sucks a bit because there was heaps of plans for this year to actually knuckle down and be a part of all the Western Force women's stuff that they had going," she said.
They have set up a female academy and Nielsen was hoping to do some training with them.
"Because it's (Super W) just five rounds, plus finals if you're lucky, and the rest of the year there isn't a whole lot going on, they were going to keep us ticking over with some extras," she said.
One of the biggest disappointments out of it all for Nielsen though is the prospect of the Aon Uni 7s series not going ahead.
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"I was hoping to have a good crack at 7s this year," she said.
"It is a September/October comp but still I think it's a bit dubious whether that will go ahead."
"I think it's (7s) probably my calling with all the space and the short sharp game. But I'm yet to play a proper 7s game which is killing me."
The just-completed Super W season was a "pretty tough" one for the WA side. They didn't manage to pick up a win, but were a very young team with a lot of raw talent.
"Personally I felt really good having a bit of experience on my shoulders but I feel like I still have a lot more to give in terms of as an attacking player," Nielsen said.
In saying that she didn't have a lot of opportunities.
"We did a lot of defence, especially in some of those heavier losses it was just constant defence," she said.
