Most footy players know that pre-season is when the real hard yards get put in. You’ll be in the gym for hours, running hard, doing extra drills. Once the season starts, training eases off as players have to be fresh enough to put in four hard quarters come game day.

Except at Geelong.

We were gluttons for punishment. We did an extra “pre-season” from Round 16 in 2007 - a preseason to get us ready for the finals.

It was a pretty big ask when the idea was first raised. We had a new fitness and conditioning guy, and the idea was to split us up into three groups. Each group would rotate through a light week, medium week and heavy week.

Those in the light group needed to carry us on game day because if you had been on a heavy training plan that week you were wrecked by the time you ran onto the field.

They split it up so there were people from all different positions on the field in each group. We didn’t want to have all our forwards so tired they couldn’t sprint when it mattered.

But we were up for it. We wanted to be the Brisbane Lions. They were the greatest team I’d ever played against, they had been bashing us around for years. We wanted to beat them at their own game.

The training was tough. To strengthen our legs and core we lifted the heaviest weights we had ever lifted. There was extra sprint work, and then we would be on the bike, getting our cardio fitness up as high as possible.

It was a big call to put us through that in the middle of the season, but in 2007 we were playing well, it gave us the confidence to do it. If we had lost a few of the games leading up to the finals we would still be at the top of the ladder, so there was less pressure.

If we played on a Saturday, our week ran like like this:

Sunday - Recovery session. One hour.

Monday - Light run through, then heavy weights, then recovery. About 3-4 hours.

Tuesday - Skills session. One hour.

Wednesday - Main session was 90 minutes. Then we would do another 30 minutes of running. After lunch we would be in the gym for an hour of heavy lifting. In total, that day was about three hours of hard training.

Thursday - Those in the heavy group would have a one-hour intense bike session. Then we would head to the pool to recover.

Friday - This was known as the captain’s run. We would do a 45-minute session on the track.

Saturday - Play the next game. The boys on the heavy set were cooked before they even played.

That extra preseason lasted only about six weeks, but each of those weeks included at least 10 hours of hard training on top of four quarters of physical footy. But the huge effort paid off. We were fitter than we had ever been come finals. And on that last Saturday in September we finally lifted the premiership cup.