The days don’t come much harder according to Jamie Macmillan.

“That’s a burn…that’s tough…haven’t really done anything like that yet,” the youngster said regarding training at the University of Utah.

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The team had just been put through an incredibly difficult Brazilian running session which involved match-day simulation as well as wrestling and boxing.

“We’re looking at what happens in a game where there’s repeated high intensity efforts so whether it’s contested ground balls, contested marking and trying to match that with some good long high intensity effort running,” explained Dan Meehan, North’s strength and conditioning coach.

“Essentially (we are) just looking for some game-specific conditioning. So high intensity efforts dispersed with some metabolic conditioning at different stages.”

That meant a hard run to a skills station, then contested work, followed by another run and another drill…all that repeated over and over until the players were exhausted.

One cycle took about 20 minutes to complete, and there were three cycles to get through.

“That was one of the hardest things I’ve done…I’ll sleep well tonight I reckon,” said Lachlan Hansen.

“Your legs are heavy, you want to stop but you know, you just know you’ve gotta keep going,” Ayden Kennedy commented.

“This is more football running compared to some of the other things we do.

This is more relative to a game so I guess it gets you through,” he said.