THERE are times when the Sydney Swans’ elite performance manager Rob Spurrs might just be the players’ least favourite member of the football department.
For much of the past three months, Spurrs has been driving the players through gruelling running sessions designed to test the limits of their endurance.
Sand dunes, 3km time trials, interval training - you name it, the Swans have done it.
And Spurrs freely admits that he enjoyed every moment of his charges’ suffering.
“Very much so,” he said with a laugh.
Now in his third pre-season at the helm of the club’s fitness program, Spurrs has relished the Swans’ extended off-season after they missed the finals for the first time in seven years.
The first eight weeks of the pre-season program were devoted almost solely to building the players’ aerobic base, much to the dismay of some of the club’s less gifted runners.
But Spurrs believed the increased effort would pay dividends in 2010.
“As a footy department, we decided to have that focus at the back end of the ’09 season,” he said.
“We knew it was going to be a very different looking list and given that most of the players were going to be able to do a lot of the running from day one, there was a real chance to put a lot of work in over the summer.”
It hasn’t gone unnoticed by the players, with several declaring this year’s preparation the hardest they’ve done.
Reigning Bob Skilton medallist Ryan O’Keefe, who is now in his 11th pre-season, had no doubt it was the toughest in his time at the club.
“I think ‘Spurrsy’ has been given a licence and he’s taken full advantage of it,” he said.
“But a lot of guys need that work to get a good base under them and we should come in [to the season] fit and full of confidence.”
Spurrs returned the compliment, naming O’Keefe among a group that included Craig Bird, Jarrad McVeigh, Nick Malceski and draftees Lewis Jetta and Byron Sumner that had impressed with their efforts.
Apart from the expected improvements in the players’ aerobic fitness, Spurrs said the extended pre-season had allowed the club to include a wider variety of training methods.
“Previously, because we’ve been pushed for time, we haven’t been able to afford to go down to the sand dunes,” he said.
“There’s a short period of time to get their base fitness work up and before you know it, you’re into the game plan stuff and the skills side of things.
“This year, we’ve been able to do a lot more sessions that aren’t necessarily football-related like the sand dunes, like running sessions over at Centennial Park and we’ve also done some at Moore Park.”
With a NAB Cup clash against Carlton just five weeks away, the Swans’ focus will increasingly turn towards skills work and fine tuning their tactics.
But the players still won’t get off scot-free, Spurrs warned.
“The conditioning aspect will diminish somewhat as they go more into the game plan training, but within that, the skill drills will be still be at a high intensity with some extra running added on,” he said.
