When night falls on North’s Utah camp, the players are asked to give the day’s program a rating out of ten; 1 being easy with little exertion required and 10 meaning maximum effort was required in order to get through the day.

On this day, most wrote down the number 10.

“It was really tough from the get go,” an exhausted Jamie Macmillan told kangaroos.com.au just before sitting down to a well earned hot meal.

“We only had an hour break all up from nine o’clock right through till six in the evening…the rest of the time we were being pushed pretty hard physically.”

After breakfast, the squad was taken on a four kilometre run to a playing field where they stretched and did some light running. Then they headed back home for another brisk four kilometre run.

“The run was really testing because it was about zero degrees outside and wind was blasting in our faces the whole time, it was so cold.”

The playing group was then told to meet at a nearby indoor training facility which housed a large gym and cross training facilities. Here, the weights were pushed hard, the exercise bikes were pedaled fast and the boxing gloves were heavily pounded.

“Everything just wears you down but you just keep pushing through.”

For Macmillan a decision to train with North’s best runner in the off-season is now paying dividends and it makes days like this just manageable. The club’s dietician and strength and conditioning assistant Jona Segal out-runs Ryan Bastinac, Brayden Norris, Nathan Grima, Levi Greenwood and Lachlan Hansen on a regular basis. During time trials, he is always first across the line and his times are, at this moment, unbeatable.

“I was doing the training at home and I wasn’t sure if I was going hard enough, so I rang Jona and asked if I could run with him for a couple of weeks. It was great for me and I realised just hard I had to go.”

With cross-training completed the Kangaroos returned to the Newpark Hotel for lunch - they had 30 minutes to get two rolls, a muesli-bar, some fruit and some nuts down before the skills session started.

Skills were held indoors at the same facility as the cross training and the team took advantage of a soccer pitch sized synthetic arena.

With fatigue playing a major factor, the kicking was a little off and the session was not the prettiest but each player ran extremely hard with immense enthusiasm.

Footy boots off, hiking boots on…the day was turning into a nightmare.

With no break whatsoever, the boys headed back to their rooms to gear up for a 15.5 kilometre hike in the freezing evening air. Soon, the sun would begin to duck behind the mountains - time was not on their side if they wanted to make it back before dark.

“That hike was different from the others. The first one went for eight hours in knee-deep snow and second included some sprints…this one was shorter, but the pace was a lot quicker and the air was icy cold. At one point we were pretty high up...Scotty Thompson got a nose bleed.

“To go on that hike after everything we had to do earlier was pretty tough. Most of the boys are absolutely exhausted and we all know there’s going to be more punishment to come tomorrow.”

So, 23.5 kilometres + cross training + skills session - 1hr break = 10.