A 6am beach session and extra training on the field and in the gym tested Port Adelaide players as they continued their pre-season camp on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast on Saturday.

Here rookie Trent Burgoyne provides an insight into the day at Maroochydore and Lake Kawana.

We got up around 5:30 and walked down to the beach around 6 o’clock. We did a bit of grappling, tackling, a lot of body contact stuff and some games. At the end there was a navy seal activity Chad (Cornes) tried to bring in which was the whole team doing 30 sit-ups in the shallows holding a rope above our head. The waves kept hitting us, which made it harder.

I just thought we’d be there for about half an hour and wasn’t expecting that much hard work. We were there for closer to two hours and it was a really intense session.

I had a lot of scratches and bruises after but I was lucky I didn’t have to grapple with the big boys like Scott Lycett or Charlie Dixon.

I had Boyd Woodcock and Marty Frederick mainly. But I’d rather take on Boyd because Marty is a unit – he’s a strong boy. When we did tackling in the water I splashed some water in his eyes to put him off and when I was on the sand I would grab their toes when I had them pinned down. You have to try something!

We walked back and had breakfast and had a short break before going into the gym. It was a bit of legs and 20 minutes of our own stuff so I just did some arms and upper body.

Then we had a team lunch which was a nice bowl of chicken salad. At 2:30pm we went down to the ovals again at Maroochydore and went through some team defence we’d talked about the night before. It was good to start working on some structures but it was really hot! I was feeling it in the warm-up for some reason.

We ended up getting the night off so a group of us went down to a burger joint. It was me, Connor (Rozee), Zak (Butters), Dylan (Williams) and Jake Pasini. We had a nice little feed and then we walked back and grabbed an ice cream. When we got back Zak thought it would be a good idea to play some table tennis with the loser having to jump in the lake. Connor was pretty good so he probably won. Dylan actually beat Ken the other day and Ken takes it pretty seriously. I think Ken talks a big game but he hasn’t played me yet!

In the end it was me and Zak playing off for who had to go in the lake. He was all talk but I smacked him up and sent him into the water!

We’ve got a really good bond with some of the second-year guys, especially me because I had been at the club throughout the year with the academy. They’re very easy to talk to, there’s some good jokes and banter – especially Butters.