Heat.
It's the thing that will make footballers fitter, at least according to Port Adelaide's high performance manager Darren Burgess.
He's the last man I'm sitting down with as part of portadelaidefc.com.au's 2014 Season Preview.
It is going to be a big season ahead with double-up matches against Carlton, Fremantle and Sydney - three of last year's finalists, and Adelaide and Melbourne.
They will be tough tests for this emerging Power outfit.
Combined with the full SANFL League season now featuring as part of a fully-integrated Port Adelaide football program, players will effectively play all bar a theoretical minimum three weekends during the season, owing to fixtured bye programs.
That is a mammoth ask when you consider the gruelling pre-season this playing group has been put through under Burgess's supervision.
It's a pre-season that has traversed continents, been squeezed into a shorter time frame and survived record-breaking temperatures in Adelaide.
But it is one Burgess hopes will deliver Ken Hinkley the fast and furious playing list he requires for his brave, attacking game plan.
If there's anyone that can produce that, it's Burgess.
Arriving back at Alberton after stints helming the fitness regimes for the Socceroos and Liverpool, Burgess brought a wealth of international-standard experience to the halls of Power Headquarters.
As I scramble into Burgo's office having missed my earlier appointment with him (and interrupting his lunch in the process) I'm keen to get an insight into the difference between pre-season 2014 and the one preceding it.
Was it harder? Were new things tried and tested? How have last year's recruits adapted to full-load training? And what about the new kids coming into a team that wants to quickly charge to the top rungs of AFL football?
All of these questions, I know, are on the minds of so many true believers.
We are on the cusp of another football season - the 144th consecutive year of football for Port Adelaide - and as its first-class team, the Power playing group is charged with carrying the hopes and dreams of, now, more than 44,000 members and more supporters besides.
The Adelaide Oval adds a new dimension to the way this club goes about the entire process of football - on and off the field - and for Burgess and his team, every tactical advantage Ken Hinkley wants to exploit from a ground with new dimensions, a new feel, a new opportunity, will come down to them to drill into the players from a physical point-of-view.
And while the topic of player wellbeing remains at the forefront of every football person's mind this year, Burgess must push his team to the limits without breaking them.
They say 'no pain, no gain', but in the world of AFL football there's a very fine line between making progress and losing it all; the risk of injury, burn-out and fatigue.
Hopefully while we chew the fat, and while Burgo chews his lunch, we'll have a clearer picture of what 2014 has in store for 45 sets of legs...
Matthew Agius: Has anything changed between this year and 2013 in terms of the training and preparation you’ve put the players through for the upcoming season?
Darren Burgess: Yeah, we’ve had to train a bit more intensely because there’s less time for our pre-season having played in two finals. But overall, the theme and the style of training hasn’t differed too much from what we did last year.
MA: So things like heat training, wrestling in sand pits, flogging the boys non-stop - it’s all basically the same?
DB: Pretty much. Because of the work they did last year, the guys were able to tolerate a bit more this time around. We upped the ante this year, but the methods we used and the overall types of training remained reasonably consistent. The drills differed because of the game plan we’re hoping to implement this year, but generally things were the same.
MA: Can you tell us about some of the new things you’ve trialled this pre-season and the philosophy behind doing them?
DB: The main thing we introduced this pre-season was the Dubai training camp. In that time we were able to train the guys as hard across nine days as any teams or individual athletes I’ve been involved with. That was the main point of difference between this and the last pre-season. The average temperature was 32 degrees, the humidity was high and the guys were working really, really hard. Hopefully we got some benefit out of it; the initial testing shows we did. The proof will be in the pudding, I’m sure.
(By this stage the guilt I'm suffering from quizzing Burgo while his lunch gets left uneaten becomes overwhelming)
MA: Do you want to finish your lunch?
DB: Nah it’s OK - keep going.
(Slight relief)
MA: You say Dubai was harder than anything you've done before, but you also took the boys to train overseas in London at the end of 2012. How was Dubai that much harder? Was it simply the heat factor, or was there something else that made it worthwhile?
DB: In London we only trained twice leading into the exhibition game, so it was fairly relaxed while we were overseas then. Ask any of the guys in the team this year and I think they’ll tell you it was anything but relaxed when we were in Dubai.
MA: How have the boys taken to training this summer and what are some of the results you think they’ll produce?
DB: It’s hard to exactly predict what we’ll see, but our testing indicates, and I’d like to think, we’ll be fitter this year. I think from everything we’ve seen it's clear the hunger is still there with the guys and they’re really, really motivated to be an elite team in the competition. Hopefully the pre-season has given them both the physical and tactical tools to do that.
MA: So we presume the guys in the upper echelons of the playing list have stepped up, but what about the guys in those second and third tiers? Have they gone up a level too?
DB: Yeah, physically they have. The skills are something for the coaches to comment on, but even guys like Kane Cornes, Sam Colquhoun, Kane Mitchell and our other elite runners have improved on their ‘three-k’ time trial times. So certainly from a physical point of view we’ve seen improvements As most teams do over pre-season we’ve found pretty good results, but we did have a good year last year and I’m confident we’re in a better position this year. Things seem to be pointing in the right direction.
MA: Ollie Wines, Tom Clurey and Mason Shaw would have undergone a modified pre-season last year. A fuller program for them this year, how have they gone in that program and taken to the greater demand?
DB: Really well. Ollie Wines has completed every session for the pre-season, so he will hopefully be in really good shape. Last year he was the most rotated player in the AFL and we can’t afford for him to rotate so much this season and he knows that and has responded to the training demand. Mason Shaw and Tom Clurey have been impressive too - it’s very exciting.
MA: What about the new players to come to the club. With one exception they’re all young 18-year-olds and they would’ve had a modified program, but how have they handled the AFL experience?
DB: Again, no issues. We had Sam Gray [the 21-year-old] miss some time with a shoulder injury, but other than that the guys are in really good shape and are ready to attack the AFL and SANFL season. They’re certainly really impressive players, the ones we’ve drafted, and from a physical point of view it’s certainly very exciting. They’ve handled everything we’ve thrown at them.
MA: Everything is pointing to this being a running team. But was that the way you and Ken viewed the side last year and, if not, how has it changed and evolved over the course of the last 12 months to where we are today?
DB: I think we were a running team last year, but we didn’t have the durability that we do now. If you look at the really successful teams in the competition, they have an average age of 25 or 26 and have built durability over many pre-seasons. We’re not quite there yet, but we’d like to think from a running point of view we’d at least be the equivalent of the best teams going around. We haven’t changed the running we’ve done, but the testing and monitoring we’ve done indicates the boys have stepped up from last year to this year.
MA: So like with anything, the more time you invest, the better you’ll get?
DB: Correct. We’ve done a lot of it this pre-season, as we did last year. The boys are just getting better and have a real appetite for the work. They’re actually asking to more after certain pre-season sessions and saying ‘Can I do a little bit more?’. To me that says that they know where their bodies are at and really want to improve and succeed by doing more work.
MA: With every change of personnel at a club, particularly in the leadership of a fitness program in your case, there will be changes in the way things are done. No doubt, one of the things that comes with change is the risk of players ‘blowing up’. Things seemed to go pretty well last year though, so is it safe to assume the durability you speak of in the players this year will further diminish the likelihood of ‘blow ups’ happening?
DB: You can never predict that. It’s what we hope for, it’s what Ian McKeown does with them in the gym and what our whole fitness team does on the track to make sure they’re fine, but you can never completely control how things could pan out. We had a pretty good year last season and they handled the load well. All those things said, we do anticipate them handling the load well again this year.
MA: What about your team who you work with here? How important are they to the program as a whole?
DB: They’re all really important and most clubs in the AFL now have pretty extended staffs. Even though the high performance managers are probably the focal points of all the work in the program, the fitness staff have the most contact and work very closely with all the athletes. Most of our guys have been here a while now and have really good relationships with the players. From a cohesion and work ethic point of view, it’s great to have our whole team on the same page and working towards shared goals in the way that we are currently.
MA: Injury management. Port Adelaide seems better placed now compared to this time last year. More players have completed pre-season and that can only be a good result from a numbers-on-track perspective, can't it?
DB: Coaches like it because there are more players to participate in their drills and certainly the competition for spots is right up there. At the start of last pre-season we’d had 17 players in for surgery and we haven’t had nearly that many this year. Yes, we’ve had some bumps and bruises along the way, but the list is in as good a shape as we could hope for going into Round 1.
MA: Ken wants the boys to be running just as hard at the end of games as they do at the start. I break that down to mean the effort will be as high at the end of games as at the start, even though the output mightn’t be as high due to fatigue. How does this team live that philosophy in what they’ve done?
DB: As I said before, this is as good a team as I’ve ever had in terms of believing in themselves and never giving up. No matter what the time in the game or the quarter is, they genuinely believe they can run all day and for most of them, they can. I think the belief that happens when you work hard over pre-season can’t be replicated or manufactured. Ken wants to play a running game and it’s our job as a fitness staff to deliver running players. It’s a high-risk playing style both tactically and physically, but we think they’re well placed to handle it.
MA: You came back to Port Adelaide from stints leading the fitness programs of the Socceroos and Liverpool and there was speculation as to whether you’d introduce soccer practices into AFL training. Was it something you wanted to do and have you been able to do it?
DB: If anything, what we’ve been able to introduce is the development of robustness in the players. Within elite soccer, the players are training every single day with few days off or 'down days'. They cope and are able to cope with it all. What I think we’ve been able to instil here within our group is the ability to cope with whatever we throw at them. You look at Anna Meares or Cadel Evans - they train just as hard as elite athletes and cope with it; our players can too.
MA: So I take it ‘robustness’ means that the players can meet the benchmark level you expect of them every time, whatever you challenge them with?
DB: If you continually raise that bar and continually ask a lot of the players within reason. There’s obviously a limit to what you can do, but if you continuously monitor and assess the players - and we do on a daily basis - they are going to be capable of a lot more than they think they are. What we’re exploring is how much they can do, not what they think they can do. They handle it very well.
MA: What does a typical week look like for the Power? Can you talk us through the week leading up to Round 1 from when the final siren goes in the trial game against St Kilda through to the first bounce against Carlton the following Sunday.
DB: As soon as we finish against St Kilda we’ll put the boys through recovery. We’ll be playing here at Alberton so we’ll be able to put them in the pool and ice baths, monitor any injuries and get them well-recovered from a nutrition and structural and body point of view. The next day we’ll go to the beach for recovery and have another water session. Monday’s a review day with a gym session and light field session. Tuesday is the same and we’ll train Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday before the game. Wednesday is the players’ day off. Friday will be a light craft and skills session, and Saturday will be our captain’s run - a light skills session - leading into the game before we fly to Melbourne. The boys will have a light warmup on the game day and then we head to Etihad Stadium to go through our regular pre-match preparation. Our goal is to monitor and assess the state and readiness of the players to play against Carlton. It’s a standard eight-day week for us before we play, but I’m sure there will be a little spice given it’s the first game of the year.
MA: You’re the last coach to be interviewed for our 2014 Season Preview and as with our interviews with Kenny, Harty, Walshie and Buddha, I’d like it if you could say what our supporters can expect from Port Adelaide in 2014 from a fitness perspective?
DB: They’ll certainly see a running team, a team that will chase every player, ball, contest. They’ll see a very physical team; they players pride themselves on being physical. Certainly if quarters, halves, moments or games don’t go our way it won’t be for lack of effort on our playing group’s behalf. They’re effort will be absolutely unquestioned and their physical state right now is better than it was last year. They handled 2013 really well, physically-speaking. We feel we’re placed well to handle the rotation cap and attack the season physically.
