CTV > Watch the Guy McKenna interviewCollingwood players returned to pre-season training on Monday and assistant coach Guy McKenna was impressed with the overall condition of the group.
After a two-week break for the Christmas/New Year period, players did some testing on Saturday before hitting Gosch’s Paddock on Monday to mark the start of a two-week program before the squad heads off for a three-week training camp in South Africa.
“They (the players) all came back in good nick, and obviously on Monday’s training session, their skills were a bit rusty, but we expect that and they’ll fit in another couple of sessions before shooting off to South Africa,” McKenna told CTV at the Lexus Centre.
With the Magpies’ 2007 campaign having extended deep into September, the challenge for the coaches and conditioning staff was dealing with a late start to the pre-season.
With the club’s first pre-season cup game – against Adelaide in Dubai on February 9 – a little over a month away, McKenna explained it’s important to build the players up while taking into account the rigours of a long season ahead.
“We’re not going to tip them over, obviously they’ll get their conditioning through the NAB Cup,” McKenna added.
“The next two weeks are going to be slowly building up but nothing too flash, because as we saw last year there were peaks and troughs in the season, we really have to manage the blokes and get them through a pretty unusual pre-season for us.”
Collingwood’s training camp in South Africa will commence on January 19, with the club set to utilise the facilities at Potchefstroom’s North West University, renowned for its high performance institute which attracts athletes from all over the world eager to benefit from training at high altitude in a world-class setup.
A group will then head to Cape Town to conduct a series of community camps and visits, with the team heading to Dubai to take on the Crows, the first game of the AFL 2008 pre-season competition.
The benefits of the high altitude pre-season training were experienced by the club at the end of 2005 and 2006 when Collingwood ventured to Northern Arizona University in the United States.
