28 Sep 2021

NRL referee Henry Perenara joins online crowd in lobby for MIQ room

From Checkpoint, 5:12 pm on 28 September 2021

On Tuesday evening thousands of New Zealanders are joining the virtual MIQ lobby for the next lottery of vouchers.

3800 rooms in managed isolation for October, November and December are being released at 6pm.

It is the second room allocation since the government introduced the new system where people are randomly placed in a queue - giving everyone the same chance of securing a spot.

But the last voucher offer was massively over subscribed - with 25,000 people in the lobby at anyone time, vying for just over 3,000 rooms.

Henry Perenara's NRL career took him to Australia 20 years ago, and he's been a referee for the last 13.

But the NRL season is almost done and a heart condition and other factors has seen Henry call time on his offshore career, now he and his son need to get home to other family.