But the Newcastle mentor did reveal the Italian marquee star had travelled on the team bus to Sydney airport on Monday before being sent back to Newcastle.

Sources told The Herald yesterday that airport officials prevented Vignaroli from travelling with his teammates on Monday's trans-Tasman flight to the New Zealand capital because he did not have the appropriate paperwork.

Culina said last night that was not the case and maintained Vignaroli was "rested" because of a calf injury that has afflicted him in recent weeks.

But the veteran coach confirmed that Vignaroli travelled on the team bus in the expectation he was fit, only to be ruled out when the Jets arrived at Sydney airport.

"All I know is that his calf didn't measure up," Culina said.

"There was no point taking him on a long trip if his calf wasn't going to stand up to it.

"Once that was established that his calf was no good, he might as well stay in Australia and get it treated than go all the way to New Zealand.

"Once it was decided his calf was no good, we decided to send him back."

Pressed on why they decided to take Vignaroli to Sydney, Culina said, "Well, we were hoping he would be OK."

Asked if Vignaroli had been receiving physiotherapy on the bus, Culina replied, "No he wasn't getting treated, he was OK.

"There was no real concern, but when we got to Sydney it didn't look like he was going to be OK, so we decided to rest him for Sunday [against North Queensland], which is another important game for us."

Culina said he knew nothing of speculation that the real reason behind Vignaroli's non-appearance was because his visa was invalid.

"You're coming from Newcastle," he said.

"We've been in New Zealand for a couple of days, and I'm not on the computer so I'm not sure what's going on."

Jets CEO John Tsatsimas did not return calls to The Herald.

In the absence of Vignaroli and Ben Kantarovski, Jobe Wheelhouse and Kaz Patafta started in midfield alongside Ljubo Milicevic and Song Jin-hyung.

Wheelhouse had his best game of the season and Patafta had a couple of chances but was replaced uninjured in the 56th minute.