The GIANTS have hit the ground running as they prepare for the 2020 AFL season.
GIANTS Head Coach Leon Cameron cast a watchful eye over the first to fourth year players as they returned with a 2km time trial on Monday.
The GIANTS’ pre-holidays training period will be different albeit familiar for the playing group.
For the first time since 2015 the GIANTS will hold a pre-season training camp, while they’ll also return to nomadic lifestyle for a few weeks when it comes to training locations.
With Tom Wills Oval unavailable after being resurfaced in October, the club will train at a number of different locations which harks back to the formative years of the GIANTS.
However, the GIANTS’ won’t be training on baseball diamonds this time around.
“It’s (Tom Wills Oval) out of action until Christmas, but we’re lucky we’ve got our soccer pitch up the back of the training ground, so we’ll just have to spend a bit of time there,” Leon Cameron told GIANTS TV.
“We’ll spend a bit of time here in the precinct, there’s an NRL ground we’re going to use for some of our training and I think we get to spend three or four sessions at GIANTS Stadium in amongst all the concerts they’re hosting there.
“We’ve got to move around a bit, but we feel as though we’ll get the appropriate amount of work in there.
“It’s not going to make a difference compared to if we train out here or at a different venue.”
The GIANTS will head north to Noosa for a team training camp in the last week before players take time off over the holiday period.
The GIANTS last headed to Noosa in December 2015 after holding successful camps there in 2013 and 2014.
“We haven’t been on a pre-season camp for the last three years,” Cameron said.
“Because we do a fair bit of travel throughout the main season, we sort of opted not to have one.
“We’d been going to Noosa for two or three years in a row for no particular reason other than to bond.
“Once we finish up there, we’ll break for three weeks for their Christmas break and we’re back for January six and ramp it right up because you want to have a good six or seven weeks of hard training before you hit the Marsh pre-season competition."
The GIANTS are on track to see vice-captain Stephen Coniglio return in time for the Marsh Community Series with Callan Ward (knee) and Matt Flynn (knee) also ramping up their training from respective ACL reconstructions.
Lachie Whitfield was the only player to go under the knife this off-season but it’s not expected to affect his preparations for 2020.
“Whitters (Lachie Whiftield) had ankle reconstruction about four days after the last game, Stephen Coniglio’s right to go and ‘Flynny’s’ sort of around that May/June mark,” Cameron said.
“He’s spent an enormous amount of time in here over the break and is sort of heading in the right direction.
“Wardy is on track for round one or close to it.
“He’s been over to America and spent a week over in Philadelphia doing some training over there strengthening his knee, so he’ll come back and jump into our program fully probably towards the back of January.”
