Day six of Port Adelaide’s pre-season camp on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast saw slightly cooler conditions and a less intense training schedule.
Here rookie Trent Burgoyne provides an insight into the penultimate day of the camp at Lake Kawana and Maroochydore.
I was off my legs again today because I was still a bit sore in my shins – but nothing to worry about. They said there was no real need to train too much or overdo it in December so we all went down to training for a team meeting to go over forward and back stoppages. Then I came back with 13 other boys like Hamish (Hartlett).
We did some conditioning on the bike and some upper body work with Daniel Buberis from the fitness team. We did half an hour on the bike in what was a tough session and then hit the weights with Robbie (Gray) and Rocky (Tom Rockliff). It was really tough.
We finished then had a little lie down and waited for the other boys to come back. When they got back we had lunch – just some sandwiches and chicken. We had another meeting focussed around offence and how every line should play and what we want to try improve going into the season.
We actually thought we had another training session in the afternoon so we got ready to head off again but Ken (Hinkley), Vossy (Michael Voss) and Mackers (Head of High Performance Ian McKeown) were pretty nice and they let us have the afternoon off. It was a bit of a shock but it was nice to have a break considering how much work we’ve done and how many kilometres we’ve clocked up.
So I went down to the shopping centre with Cam Sutcliffe, Pepp (Sam Powell-Pepper) and Pisty (Pete Ladhams) and got something to eat. We all went out to dinner after that in our line groups. I’m with the forwards so it was nice to have some fun, get to know them and crack a few jokes with them. We went to an Asian street food place at Mooloolaba.
When we get back we’re having a little Christmas get together on our last night on the camp. We’ve organised Kris Kringle presents. I had to get something for Justin Westhoff so I got him some beard wax. It’s not easy to get presents for people but I think I did alright.