PORT ADELAIDE players are taking part in their heaviest week of training for the season as part of a camp of sorts.
The club has most recently used camps on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast to punish the players physically and increase their fitness, as well as build connection within the group.
With the shortened pre-season and attempts to limit the travel teams do, the club has elected to conduct a camp at Alberton Oval.
“We’ve called it ‘camp week’. It’s our signature week of the program,” senior assistant Michael Voss explained at a press conference on Monday.
“It’s probably the biggest load they’ll get throughout the season so come Friday they’ll be pretty worn out so our workload is going to go up a fair bit.
“With that we get to throw in another few things and have some fun as well and a chance to build some of those connection things as well that we’ve built over the last couple of years.”
While there will be some fun, team-building activities as part of the week, the increased training load would be a key focus of the camp, Voss explained.
He said it would be similar to the recent pre-season camps but there would be more of a football focus this year.
“When we have this sort of week, it’s normally pre-Christmas and we’re going into that break and you’ve got some physical requirements you’ve got to build into them as well as some footy,” Voss said.
“We’ll take a bit more of a footy focus to get the workload into them, which means more match play, which is what they love.
“It is an increased load and we want to get that body of work into them in preparation for the practice matches coming up.”
Voss said it helped that the club had a fully fit list to choose from so that the focus could be on high-intensity drills and perfecting game style instead of rehabilitation.
“We’ve got good healthy numbers out on the track which means we’ve got plenty of presence there and it gives us a chance to work on the little things that will hopefully make a difference in the end,” he explained.
“In pre-season we can’t benchmark against anything other than ourselves and one of those important markers, that any of the 18 clubs will have, is their ability to be able to get players out on the track and fortunately, we’ve been pretty healthy in that regard.
“It just makes the drills that much more intense, you can focus a bit more on what you want to get out of your game style and get into match play pretty quick, which is the stage we’re at now.”
Voss is entering his 30th year in the AFL and seventh at Port Adelaide.
The three-time premiership player and Brownlow Medallist said the current Port Adelaide list was driven and hungry for Premiership success, but it would not just happen.
“The big thing is that you have to give yourself in pre-season an opportunity to set up your season,” he said.
“The guys have presented themselves in great fashion. For us to be able to get into game-like drills straight away, that’s been a big tick.
“One year doesn’t relate to another but we’ve certainly established some consistency in the way that we play, so there’s some reliability in the group in what we need to play like to give us the best chance.
“And then we go into pure qualification mode and that’s what the home and away season is. If we qualify (for finals) and qualify well by giving ourselves a good percentage chance to go well.
“To get ahead of that would be quite arrogant. We’ve got to stay in the moment, live in the moment, get our jobs done and that will all look after ourselves.”
